It was just before 8 a.m.on October 17, 2010.She’d checked the higher summits forecast posted by the Mount Washington Observatory before she left.Based on her experience, Bales knew that her hike was realistic.Besides, she had two plans and extra layers of clothing to better regulate her temperature as conditions changed.

At 10:30 a.m., the weather was showing its teeth.Bales added even more layers, including a jacket to protect herself from the cold winds and heavy fog.She made her way across the snow—covered ridge toward Mount Washington and began to think about calling it a day.Then she noticed something:a single set of footprints in the snow ahead of her.She’d been following faint tracks all day and hadn’t given them much thought, because so many people climbed Jewell Trail.But these, she realized, had been made by a pair of sneakers.She silently scolded the absent hiker for breaking normal safety rules and walked on.

Now she felt genuinely alarmed.She was sure the hiker could not navigate(找到方向)in the low visibility and was heading straight toward the challenging trails of the Great Gulf Wilderness.Bales stood there, shocked.The temperature and clouds were in a race to find their lowest point, and darkness was mere hours away.If Bales continued to follow the tracks.she’d add risk and time to the route she’d already adjusted to manage both.But she could not let this go.She turned to the left and called out, “Hello!”into the frozen fog.

Bales wouldn’t get an answer until a week later, when the president of her rescue group received a letter in the mail.It read: “I hope this reaches the right group of rescuers.I want to remain anonymous(匿名的), but I was called John.On Sunday, October 17, I went up my favorite trail, Jewell, to end my life.Weather was to be bad.Thought no one else would be there.I was dressed to go quickly.Next thing I knew this lady was talking to me, changing my clothes, giving me food, making me warmer.

Wayne Boone knew he should be dead. His cab(驾驶室)had crashed into the guardrail on the far right edge, destroying the metal barrier that protected his truck from dropping into the water below, almost flying through the air. It all happened so fast. How was he still alive? Somehow, the back of his cab had got stuck on the bridge’s edge before it could complete its falling. His empty trailer(拖车), meanwhile, leaned to the left, sliding sideways at a 90-degree angle to the cab.

Whatever the force was that held the cab on the edge, Boone knew it couldn’t last. He was injured, but his body had yet to fully noticed the pain. He forced himself to focus. If he had any chance of escaping the cab and surviving, he had to get free from his seat belt. The cracked windshield(挡风玻璃)beneath him exposed the dark waters below. If he put any weight on the glass, he risked bursting through and falling the rest of the way. Under the howl of the wind, he heard voices from above. “It’s about to go!”   

Got to get free. Releasing his seat belt, Boone tried to hold on to the seat, but he immediately slid into the windshield. The glass shifted in its frame. He climbed upward, aware that he was getting cut along the way. He slipped again. And again. Each time his feet met the windshield, the glass gave a little more. The next time could be the last. Gathering all his strength, he pulled himself between the seats and threw himself back as far as he could behind the driver’s seat.

Minutes passed—to Boone, it felt like hours—before he heard the approaching whistle. To his ears, the harsh sound could have been angels singing. Hearing people shout with joy when they saw a firefighter deliver him to safety, Boone felt his heart full of gratitude. He was rushed to the hospital.

In January 2017, snow began’ to fall across the Apennines. From his home in the Rome suburbs, Edward watched the weather with concern. He and his wife, Caroline, had planned an overnight getaway to the hotel. But now he wondered whether they should go with the road covered with snow. Edward phoned the hotel, whose owner, Del Rosso, advised Edward to use chains on his tyres.

After a short talk, Edward and Caroline decided to make the trip. By the time they neared the resort (度假胜地) six hours later, they were battling a total whiteout. When they finally reached the hotel, they were cold and exhausted. They checked into their room, trying to forget their long day in the car.

Suddenly, the hotel began to shake. The windows rattled, and the water in the tub spilt over the edges. An earthquake with a magnitude of 5. 7 had struck the mountain. Edward had had enough. “Let’s get out of here,” he told his wife, dressing quickly. They were about to head to the parking lot when the snow on the mountain began to slide.

Martin, the resort’s caretaker, had been working in the tiny boiler hut about 30 yards from the main building when he noticed something abnormal. Standing on an empty snowfield, he gazed at a trail of complete destruction — it was as if a giant rake (耙子) had been dragged down the mountain, pulling down beech trees, crushing cars, chewing up everything in its path.

Finding a signal with his phone seemed to take forever. In fact, it took two hours before Martin finally spoke with the chief of the region’s rescue team.

“We’re coming,” Crocetta promised.

“How long will it take?” asked Martin.

“Five or six hours.”

Eight hours after Martin had talked to Crocetta, the rescuers finally arrived. There was no movement anywhere — no human sound, just rubble (碎石).Edward lay in a coffin-sized pocket of air beneath 30 feet of snow, ice, and rubble. He could hear nothing of what was happening at the surface. Shock had set in, and he felt no pain, no hunger, no cold. Each time Edward awoke, he faced a new terrible reality: he was buried alive. Despair suddenly seized him. He asked himself, who is going to save us?

Nick and three other rescuers kept digging on, breaking blade after blade on their circular saws (圆锯), battling toward a faint cell signal detected deep in the ruins. Suddenly they heard a voice. They silenced their saws and listened. It was Edward. He was still fading in and out of consciousness. A vision of his wife stayed with him, an angel of mercy, he thought. She assured him he would be OK.

“Edward, we are here!” Nick shouted, ten feet above where the trapped man lay.” Are you injured? Are you bleeding?”

As the voices and the buzzing of saws grew louder, Edward became more alert. “Where is my wife?”

“We put her in the car because it’s cold,” Nick lied.

At last, at around six in the morning, Nick’s saw broke through a final thick layer of insulation (隔绝). He pointed his light toward the opening and spotted Edward’s back. Nick could see how the angled beams had created a cocoon that prevented Edward from being crushed to death. Those near him had not been so lucky: Squeezed in the space with him were the bodies of two women — one supporting his head, one curled (卷曲) beneath his left leg.

Rescuers raised the concrete beams off Edward’s limbs with a jack (千斤顶). “You are a superhero,” Nick said as he reached beneath Edward’s armpits and gently lifted him out of his tomb.

Five days after his rescue, Edward was given the heartbroken news that his wife had died. Her body had been found, crushed by debris, near where Edward had been trapped. The angel who had appeared to him in his dreams had, somehow, never left his side.