April 25 marks the two-year anniversary of the violent 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal, triggering deadly landslides and avalanches across the country that killed approximately 9,000 people. The hour-long documentary “,” premiering Monday at 9 p.m. on Smithsonian Channel, recounts the days following the fatal disaster by interviewing climbers on Mount Everest and hikers in Langtang National Park who survived. One those featured is Michael Churton, a 40-year-old from Brooklyn, who was making a movie about a group of climbers and was at base camp when the avalanche struck. Here, Churton tells ANDREA MORABITO his story of survival and recovery.
There were four of us sitting around a lunch table when we felt the ground do a little hiccup and it immediately felt like an earthquake. While running to get my camera, it got more and more violent to the point that it was very difficult to stand. When it stopped, we went outside the tent to look at the Khumbu Icefall and I saw this massive wave of ice. My first reaction is, “we’re all going to die” and I yelled for everybody to get down, but it didn’t look like there was any surviving. It was like seeing an Empire State Buildinꦉg of ice about to come down on us.
I had about eight seconds to find a place to hide, crouched at the bottom of a small rock structure about four feet high. Th𝓀ere was about two seconds of quietness before the onslaught. It was like someone hit me with a sledgehammer. The sound was overwhelming, like a locomotive, and you could feel the ice crystals flying by.
We were covered by a foot or so of snow, but I had my hands covering my head so I had a little space below to breathe. After four or five minutes, everything got quieter, and I got up. I went to try and grab my camera but then I started bleeding on the snow and realized I wasn’t in good shape. I later found out I had broken my nose and seven bones in my face. I was also a little dizzy from a concussion and was starting to vomit. From what I could see, everything around me in the middle section of base camp was destroyed. Some tents were picked up and taken hundreds of meters, others were collapsed. We couldn’t find our expedition doctor, Eve Girawong. We later learned she was found 100 meters away with a bad head injury and died before she could get medical attention.
The rest of us made a very arduous, four-hour trek to Gor🌳ek Shep, the next town down. There I was able to send out one text to my mom to let her know I was OK. I was basically comatose for two days — I couldn’t eat, I was vomiting nonstop — until we were able to get out to Kathmandu via a businessman’s helicopter that had a few extra seats. There, the 10,000-feet lower elevation made me feel 10 times better and one of our guides drove me to a hospital to get an X-ray. I still have numbness in my face from where one of the facial bones presses the nerve.
Coming back to New York was pretty overwhelming. I struggled with that terrifying moment of feeling like you’re going to die and the survivor’s guilt of knowing there’s someone right next to me that didn’t make it. I worked out like crazy to push through the sadness. It was probably a solid year that things got worse before they started getting betterꦉ. At night🗹 I would go through my film footage from the trip, which ended up being pretty cathartic.
Surviving the avalanche doesn’t have me not wanting to do adventurous things. A year ago, I worked on “” for Science Channel, which had us flying around in helicopters in the Talkeetna Mountains and filming in the Arctic Circle and it felt great. I am working toward having a more of a career doing these adventures until my day comes. I’m careful in trying to mitigate as many risks as possible. If it’s too dangerous to go out, I make the call. I’m not into pushing it. Especially ൲because we’re just making TV.