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I nearly died in an avalanche - the eerie visions of each heart-stopping second still haunt me and almost drove me to suicide
‘This morning I’m being buried alive. I will slowly run out of air and suffocate under the snow.
‘They’ll find my body in the spring when my orange down suit emerges from the melting snow and feathers float from the tears.’
These were the thoughts tumbling through the mind of adventurer and National Geographic photographer Cory Richards when he was caught in a devastating avalanche on the 13th-highest mountain in the world.
In his new book, The Color of Everything, Richards describes in heart-stopping detail how his life flashed before him - at times bizarre, and at others almost mundane.
Richards was the first (and still the only) American to climb one of the world’s 8,000m peaks in winter, reaching the summit of Gasherbrum II in Pakistan in February 2011.
He and his fellow climbers - Denis Urubko and Simone Moro - were on their descent from that record-breaking climb when they were swept away by the sudden avalanche.
‘A piece of ice falls or one too many crystals land or the wind blows just wrong and I hear it before I see it,’ he writes, recalling the moment the avalanche hit.
Richards filmed himself breaking down in the immediate aftermath of the avalanche, for the short documentary 'Cold'
He writes: ‘They’ll find my body in the spring when my orange down suit emerges from the melting snow and feathers float from the tears'
‘It sounds like thunder and a freight train and wind all at once.
‘I try to run, but the snow is waist-deep and too heavy. I take three steps before the air blast lifts my body and I’m weightless.
‘I slam back into the tongue of the avalanche… tumbling over and over in an exploding heap of down and nylon… and it has only two colors. Black and white. Black and white. Over and over and over.’
As snow filled his open mouth and his nostrils - causing him to struggle for breath - he was powerless to scream.
‘Colorful splinters appear amidst violent flashes of black and white as the weight of my body is sucked deeper into the debris. Down is up. Up is down,’ he writes
Meanwhile, his emotions moved from fear to instinct to anger and, eventually, to resignation.
Richards - who has been outspoken about his mental health struggles - reveals that, convinced these were the final moments of his life, memories appeared like disjointed fragments: ‘A birthday. A date. A bowl of Cheerios. Parking tickets. Song lyrics and books and movies. Faces and things unsaid and words I wish I could unspeak and actions I wish to undo and things I never did, and I remember that I have taxes to pay.
‘Life does flash before my eyes but there is no poetry to it. It’s just Polaroids of a collection of things, emotions, and questions.’
This, he writes, is what it feels like to die in an avalanche: a tumbling clash of sensations and thoughts and helplessness.
Gathering all his remaining strength, he threw his head and his hand towards what he hoped was ‘up’ and, miraculously, found air. Entirely buried but for a single arm, holding his chin above the snow, he grabbed his first frenzied gasps of air and started frantically trying to free himself before the next avalanche came.
Thrashing around in the snow, whimpering and convinced his friends were dead, he suddenly heard Simone’s voice: ‘Cory, everything is okay.’ Then Denis: ‘Simone! I too am okay!’
All three were alive, against astonishing odds.
The climb made Richards famous. As well as his ice-encrusted face gracing the cover of National Geographic's milestone 125th issue, he created the award-winning documentary 'Cold'.
'Speaking about pain, anger, frustration, and everything else isn’t weak and it doesn’t make anyone a “snowflake”,' says Richards. 'It requires real vulnerability, which is a skill of strength'
Richards, Denis Urubko and Simone Moro were on their descent when they heard the sound of thunder and a freight train and wind all at once
Italian Simone Moro (left) and Russian-Polish climber Denis Urubko (right) joined Richards on the epic climb
Thirteen years on, Richards is still the only American to climb one of the world’s 8,000m peaks in winter
The climb made Richards famous, his ice-encrusted face gracing the cover of National Geographic's milestone 125th issue
But all the magazine covers and speaking engagements concealed not just his ongoing struggles with extreme depression and bipolar disorder, but also crippling PTSD, which would manifest in outbursts of violence and an escape into alcoholism.
Then, in 2020, he received a call that thrust him into the headlines again for all the wrong reasons.
By now sober, he was accused of sexual impropriety in the past - a drunken prank that came back to haunt him in the age of #metoo.
The internal investigation at National Geographic was eventually concluded and Richards’ name was cleared, but there was no way back. And, even though the magazine decided not to cut ties with its star photographer, he knew his career there was probably over.
A year later, deep in a film project about his life and about to climb a new route on Everest, his life finally came crashing down in epic style.
He'd spent days simply sobbing in his tent. Sleep-starved, his thoughts spiraled from nightmares about the avalanche through delusional daydreams, to screaming into his sleeping bag until he was hoarse.
‘I hug my legs to my chest and bounce my jaw on my knees, rocking back and forth and holding my head,' he writes. 'I can’t stop crying but am startled to notice that I’m crying at all.
‘At some point I start talking to myself in measured tones, assuring myself that everything is OK. But eventually the only words that are coming out are “I’m sorry” and “No, no, no.”’
A downed Army helicopter on Gasherbrum II - proof of the mountain's hazardous conditions
On their descent, they passed mummified bodies of those from previous attempts that had failed
All the magazine covers and speaking engagements concealed not just his ongoing struggles with extreme depression and bipolar disorder, but also crippling PTSD
After 40 hours without sleep, and just before attempting a new route on Everest, Richards realized he could no longer go on
By writing so honestly about his bipolar episode and suicide attempt, Richards hopes to help destigmatize mental health issues
Knowing that he couldn't go on with the climb, he walked off the mountain alone and abandoned the movie project, leaving his colleagues furious. Years of planning, tens of thousands of dollars, and a film crew in place were all torched in his wake.
Back home in Colorado - broke, physically spent, his career in tatters, and fielding angry emails from those he'd let down so badly - he googled ‘how to tie a noose’ and stood, naked, on a stool.
'I shower for somewhere between two minutes and an hour because I want to be clean when they find me,' he writes.
‘I put the rope around my neck and gently lean onto the noose.’
He describes the feeling as it becomes harder to breathe then, just before he blacks out, the stool tips over and he catches on to it with his feet.
Crawling off, shaking, he realizes he doesn’t want to die. He just doesn't want to live like that.
By writing so honestly about his bipolar episode on Everest and subsequent suicide attempt, Richards hopes to help destigmatize mental health issues and encourage more openness - particularly among men.
'I’ve spent most of my life trying to escape my own story of madness,' he writes. 'I’ve chased the horizon, confusing it for a perfect future where everything will make sense.
'I chose to live madly to outrun madness itself. I’ve thought that by rebellion, doing more, being better, and being different, I might be able to out-climb, out-explore, or out-create the disquiet of my mind. But what if the noise and madness were the gift?'
He adds: 'Speaking about pain, anger, frustration, and everything else isn’t weak and it doesn’t make anyone a “snowflake”. It requires real vulnerability, which is a skill of strength.
'In silence, we collapse. In silence, we die.'
The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within by Cory Richards is published by Random House, July 9