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Mount Colden hiker rescued after seven hours on icy ledge
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You'd struggle to stand still for seven minutes on a narrow ledge, let alone seven hours in the dark.
But that's exactly what one hiker had to do after getting stuck halfway up one of the most dangerous routes in New York's Adirondack Mountains, in a rescue that has been doing the rounds in US news this weekend.
The 60-year-old Canadian man was climbing the Trap Dike on Mount Colden, near Keene in Essex County, on Wednesday (October 21).
He has been named by outdoors site Northeast Explorer as Eric Le Bourhis.
Mount Colden Trap Dike hiker lost his crampons on the ice
The Trap Dike is rated as a fourth-class climb, and according to WCAX, it has claimed several lives over the years.
Conditions were dry and good when Le Bourhis set off, but they turned wet and icy as he climbed.
The problem came when he went to put his crampons on, the metal spikes climbers strap to their boots to grip ice.
The bag they were in fell, and he lost both of them.
The water below him had refrozen, which meant he couldn't climb up and he couldn't climb back down.
Speaking to Northeast Explorer, Le Bourhis said: "My first bad mistake was to not put my crampons on soon enough. I waited until I was right in front of the ice at an incline."
He added: "I felt a huge rush of guilt and shame that I was the one to do that."
Stranded hiker spent seven hours on a ledge too small to sit on
The ledge he was stuck on measured around one foot by three feet, roughly seven feet from the edge of the forest.
As the sun went down, he set off his satellite emergency beacon, and rangers were alerted at 6:22PM ET (10:22PM UTC).
Then he waited, without knowing whether the signal had even gone through.
He told the outlet: "I didn't even have enough room to sit. I did my best to not get dizzy."
By his own account he was tired, wobbly and cramping by the time help arrived.
It's not the first time someone has spent a night like this waiting to be found, after a stranded hiker in Croatia was kept alive by his dog lying on top of him for 13 hours.
Forest rangers reached the Adirondacks hiker after 1AM
Forest rangers from New York's Department of Environmental Conservation reached Le Bourhis at 1:16AM ET (5:16AM UTC) on Thursday (October 22) and set up a high-angle rope system to get him off the ledge.
Ranger Jenna Curcio was honest about how close it was.
She told WCAX that "if we both slip before I have him clipped in and on my tether, he's dead."
Ranger Nate Jeffrey told Northeast Explorer: "It's like a heart-in-your-throat kind of moment. There's rope work involved and high consequence and a diminishing timeline to get the subject to safety based on how long he's been there."
Once he was safely clipped in, the team moved him into the trees and began what Northeast Explorer described as a grueling bushwhack toward the summit and the trail.
They made it to the Marcy Dam outpost, where more rangers met them, and ATVs took everyone back to the trailhead.
The rescue was finally wrapped up at 8AM ET, more than 13 hours after the beacon first went off.
And it wasn't the only call to the Trap Dike that week, with rangers sent back up on Sunday (October 25) after two more hikers got stuck above the dike, according to Fingerlakes1.
If you're heading into the mountains this winter, it's a reminder of how fast a routine hike can turn into an emergency, and why you put the crampons on before you reach the ice, not after.