It was most likely too soon to be feeling relieved. I should have been scrambling to get out. The pilot, and Chris, were a lot faster than me in that respect, perhaps they were still smart enough to be frightened of an explosion or of the wreckage simply tumbling down glacier towards the next big crevasse.

I asked if anybody was hurt, heard two quick "OK's" and turned around to see a bunch of wires, machinery and hoses dumping fluid onto Chris in the back seat. "Is that fuel?" I asked. Tasting it, someone said "No. Transmission fluid, hydraulics," which I guess I might have known since that big hunk of machinery in the back seat where Chris's head had been was the transmission.

Chris couldn't get out his own door because the back end of the helicopter had wrapped around to block his retreat, but when the pilot opened the opposite door, he was out of there faster than Martha Stewart dumping shares of ImClone.

Chris had completed a two-week helicopter safety course a week before this ride and he'd known that the thing to do in the back seat was to get his head way down between his knees, way down, and then to get out and away. Even so, after a few minutes, he'd taken off his helmet and was rubbing his head where some impact had managed to tag him. About then I was realizing that my own head turned a lot better to one side than to the other, but I was mighty happy to be alive and was beginning to focus on how to stay that way.

It seemed that before we'd taken two steps away from the JetRanger, which with its rotors absent and its tail gone and its nose dug into the glacier, no longer looked much like a helicopter, there were already TV news helicopters buzzing around like flies over roadkill. Chris had gotten the word out via radio that we had survived intact, since Stefan and Nick had seen and reported the crash from their perch without knowing our condition.

We rigged the pilot up with an improvised harness and the three of us roped up and began moving down to where a US Army Reserve Chinook helicopter was going to come in with reinforcements and to "extract" the pilot. The glacier travel wasn't too harsh in that we didn't break any snow bridges or get avalanched on the way to the new site, but I kept looking back worriedly at the pilot in his flight suit and non-mountain boots. I knew from our earlier chat that he wasn't big on the idea of learning to climb and I hated thinking that I might sour him on the idea forever by showing him a bad time.

The CH-47 or "Chinook" is a big helicopter and it announced its entrance with the characteristic booming of twin rotors. The little news helicopters grudgingly fell back to let the big military chopper in. When a dark green Chinook bears down on you, it seems natural to check the perimeter for enemy fire. I did, but I wasn't looking for Vietcong or Taliban. I was turning to watch Liberty Wall to see if it might drop some colossal avalanche down while we focused on the roaring battleship. With a Chinook hovering 50 feet above you, it is tough to think of much else. The rotors are massive, like Ponderosa Pines, and they make a ground-shaking WHUMP every time they swing by. The rotor wash hits you at about 60-miles-per hour, so you huddle over your pack, eager to keep it from being tossed down the glacier.

— Dave Hahn, MountainZone.com Columnist