But Nando Parrado refused to be a ghost. He looked at the mountain peaks surrounding them. "The plane is white. The snow is white. They'll never see us from above. But on the other side of those mountains… Chile. Green valleys. Roads. People. We have to walk."
Weeks passed. The avalanche came on October 29, while they slept. A wall of snow and ice ripped through the fuselage, burying them alive. Eight more died, suffocated, crushed. The survivors dug themselves out with bare hands, screaming into the white darkness.
Everyone thought he was mad. The peaks were 4,600 meters high. They had no gear, no map, no food. And they were starving, freezing, dying. Searching for- Society of the snow in-All Categ...
And he wept.
That night, the silence inside the fuselage was deeper than the snow outside. Someone began to cry. Then another. Then all of them—because crying was the only thing left. But tears freeze at 20 below. They learned that quickly. But Nando Parrado refused to be a ghost
They were ghosts now. Officially.
For ten days, they climbed. They slept on ledges no wider than a coffin. They drank snow. They ate the last strips of frozen human meat. At the summit of the first peak, Nando looked back: the wreckage was a silver speck. Then he looked forward: nothing but white mountains to the horizon. The snow is white
After that, they moved to the rear of the plane—the tail section, still intact. There, they found a miracle: a small transistor radio. And on that radio, they heard the news: "The search for Flight 571 has ended. No survivors."
Every year, on October 13, they meet. They eat together. They laugh. They remember the 29 who did not come home. And Roberto Canessa, now a cardiologist, often ends the toast the same way:
Roberto Canessa, the medical student, was the first to speak the unthinkable. "There is meat out there. It's human. But it's protein. It's life."