Real-life Lost in the Andes Stories

People really have ended up lost in the Andes, with horrifying consequences.

In 1972, a small plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team from Argentina to Chile crashed in the Andes. The crash, plus an avalanche caused by the crash, left 26 of the 45 passengers and crew dead. The survivors had hardly any food, and the plane had crashed at 11,800 feet. They had a radio to listen to, but no means of signalling, and after 11 days they heard the news that the search for their plane had been given up. They resorted to eating some of the dead, whose bodies were preserved in the snow. Eventually, two of the survivors set off to find help, and came across a remote farmhouse after a gruelling ten-day trek. At the end of the ordeal, after 72 days on the mountain, there were 16 survivors.

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were climbing Siula Grande, a mountain in Peru in 1985. On the way back down the mountain, Simpson slipped and fell, breaking his leg. His friend was trying to lower him down the mountain when he was forced to cut the rope during a raging storm in order to save himself. Simpson fell 50 metres but survived, and both he and Yates made it back to safety. Simpson wrote a book about their story, which was later made into a film called Touching the Void.