I thought I could make it. I really thought I could make it. That was my last thought before everything went black.

I opened my eyes to see everything was white. I could slightly move my head to look around, but not much. I could move my hands and feet, but that was just about it. I then realized that my fingers were numb and I could barely feel my feet. My hands were throbbing, but with every throb it felt like needles being stuck into both of my hands. Then I remembered.

There was a small avalanche close to the summit of the mountain, however it could have caused a huge one. I soon realized that I was probably buried, but how deep? A few feet, ten feet, a hundred feet? The dread of being buried alive hit me like a brick wall. My breath quickened as I struggled to find oxygen. At that moment claustrophobia was like another brick wall. I started to move my whole body, flaring my arms and legs around panicking. I was able to get one hand out of the snow. I noticed that I wasn’t even buried that deep, but the layer of snow weighed down like cement as I struggled to free the rest of my body. I sat up in the freezing snow, as a huge gust of wind whipped by me.

I looked around to see where the avalanche had brought me. I was quite surprised to recognize that I had only gone down about a hundred feet from where I originally was, and all there was between me and the summit was a towering block of ice that I had started to climb when disaster struck. I tried to walk toward the wall of ice but noticed that I had neither of my ice picks. Luckily, I still had my ice grips on my shoes.

I looked around at the blanket of snow to see if I could find any of my gear. I didn’t see anything, but I took one more glance at the snow and saw a bright glare about 60 yards in front of me. I rushed to it and noticed that it was one of my ice picks glaring from the sun, with the other stuck next to it. Now I was ready for the final climb, hoping that this was the last part of this mountain trek.

I slowly chipped away at the ice, unable to feel either of my hands or feet at this point. I was about half way up the ice when my arms started to burn. It felt like I had spent an eternity on this last part of the mountain. But before I knew it, I was only a few more swings away from being at the summit, each swing becoming harder and harder to perform.

I pulled myself up and over the ledge slowly and stood up, dizzy from the lack of oxygen. I looked up and saw the summit, only about ten yards away from me. I really thought I couldn’t make it, but somehow I did.