TAPETHOK, NEPAL—Beaming with delight as he was carried down the south face of the Kangchenjunga mountain in a torrent of snow, ice, and rocks, alpinist Herman Stelling reportedly noted Thursday that the first few seconds of being swept up in a cataclysmic avalanche was actually pretty fun. “Weeeeeeeee! Yay!” said the visibly overjoyed Stelling, stressing that he felt like a kid again as he was pulled downhill in the 200-mph rush of hardened, detached snowpack. “What a rush! Alright, it is actually starting to hurt, so I’m not loving this part. And I think one of my fingers was just torn off with all that ice. Shit, yeah, I definitely just lost my whole arm. Plus, I’m trapped under a few thousand pounds of snow now and it feels like my ribcage is going to cave in. Admittedly, this kind of sucks. For a second there, though, when I was doing flips and stuff down the slope and right before my mouth and throat were completely packed with snow and I started to suffocate—that kicked ass.” At press time, Stelling noted that he was actually having an awesome time again after hypothermia caused him to begin hallucinating.
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