2022-03-21
38 分钟Hello, it's Emily Webb here, and this is Outlook.
It's the show where people open up about their extraordinary life experiences.
I read, Jo, that one of the reasons that you didn't tell your story for a long time is because when you hear other stories about survival, they sound inauthentic.
What do you mean by that?
Sometimes I worry that there's an exploitation of the event.
And I've long thought that the real tale of survival often comes after the event happens.
You know, knowing that it was affecting the lives of other people, that it was really more than just my story, that by sharing it with other people that I was sort of giving it up to the world, you know, furthering that process of letting go of, you know, some of the trauma that I had experienced.
When I spoke to Joe Yelverton, I was in our studio in London and he was in his home in Alaska, which sits at the base of the Chu Mountain range.
And it was on that mountain range that Joe survived a near death experience in his early 20s, but then spent over a decade dealing with the repercussions of his trauma.
Stand at the bottom of the Chugach Mountains and you'll see a jagged skyline of peaks, glaciers and alpine meadows.
It's part of a wild Alaskan landscape that holds more ice fields and glaciers than the rest of the inhabited world.
Heavy snowfall is also common, resulting in avalanches, something climbers like Joe have to be aware of.
Joe's been heading into the mountains since he was a teenager, often with his friend Steve, who he met when he was 19.
We were fast friends.
He just had a similar kind of wanderlust as me.
We communicated really well together, which is imperative when you're climbing in the mountains.
He just, he relished every moment.
We had a relationship that worked really well, and of course, he was my best friend.
The pair met through their work at a sports equipment company in Alaska.
Our jobs enabled us to spend a lot of time in the mountains.