TOBIN, Carl - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

When the snow he was standing on slipped loose from the mountain, he fell with it – 1,500 feet down the steep slope, free falling, striking and sliding along icy snow and rock, then free falling again.  In those moments, Carl Tobin knew he was going to die.  It was just that simple.  But the 31-year-old graduate of Crawfordsville HS – who last year climbed almost to the top of Mt. Everest – awoke on an Alaskan glacier, two broken legs twisted ben eath him, bleeding in pain.  Saved? Maybe.  He spent the next two days alone in a sleeping bag, waiting for a companion to bring help, lying beside a small stove for warmth, watching blowing snow bury him inside his tent.  In Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Wednesday morning, swallowing back pain between his words, Tobin had but one worry.  It might be a year before he gets back to full-strength mountain climbing again.  This hasn’t shaken his love for adventure a bit.  “It’s just the act of climbing itself,” he said on the telephone.  “It’s such a challenge.”  This accident kind of worried us real bad,” Tobin’s father, Stanley said from Crawfordsville Wednesday.  “We’re still concerned.  We have hopes he’ll have a full recovery.  But he’s got to do this thing; just like I do my thing and you do yours.”  Tobin is considered an excellent mountain climber.  One year ago he was scaling the slopes of Mt. Everest with an American team.  His team become the first to make it to the top of the world’s highest peak, climbing from the Tibetan side.  But Tobin was kept from the summit himself by frostbite.  This fall, he had plans for more climbing.  On Sept 16, 50 miles from even a road, he and a friend, Matt Van Enkevort were climbing an unnamed mountain in Alaska when bad weather forced them to start back down.  “We were climbing the face of the mountain,” Tobin said, “The weather got bad and we started back down.  I was leading.  A slab of hard, wind-packed snow detached and I went with it.  The landing knocked him unconscious.  But he came to quickly.  It was 40 minutes before his friend could reach him.  They worked all night getting him into a sleeping bag, pitching a tent, getting a fire started in a small stove.  “It was a lot of work, I was bleeding kind of bad.”  When Tobin was secured, Van Enkevort went for help.  He estimated it would take 5 days.  “I was pretty stable, believe it or not,” Tobin said.  “I brewed noodle soup quite often.  I didn’t think too much except about the storm.  I was real worried about it.  VanEnkevort somehow found a camp of moose hunters who had a radio.  An Army helicopter took Van Enkevort and four friends close to the site.  They skied 5 miles up the glacier and brought Tobin back on a sled.  It had been two days since the accident.  Tobin’s parents didn’t even find out about the accident until last week.  They’re going to Fairbanks soon.  Tobin expects to be in the hospital two more weeks.  It’s just something that happens,” Tobin said.  “I’ve had accidents before, none this bad.  I don’t think about the accident except sometimes here in the hospital when it hurts real bad.  I think about it then.”