www.csua.berkeley.edu/~maxmcc/malcolm
On Super Bowl Sunday, I was doing kegstands with a kid from New Hampshire, at the flat he shared with 4 other friends of mine. He was wearing huarache sandals and white socks pulled up over grey slacks and his shaggy prepschool haircut was a mess. Then the kid from New Hampshire broke a piece of hotdog off in an aggin bottle of rum, so that the dog could have a new toy. We played football out in the street at halftime and actually through most of the third quarter. The kid from New Hampshire and one of the flatmates and some other kids had gone to a cabin up by Donner Lake to go play in the snow. On Saturday afternoon, everyone went out sledding and hiking around. Sometime while they were outside, an avalanche warning was put out for where they were. I will let bayinsider take over for a second: Sierra avalanche kills Cal student By Martin Griffith The Associated Press Buried in an avalanche, Derek Lerch faced slim odds of survival. He was colder than he thought possible, a tiny hole the only thing connecting him with the air beyond the 3 feet of snow on top of him. Another UC Berkeley student, Harry Eichelberger, 21, of Chicago, and Marisa Nelson, 20, of Chico were discharged Sunday from Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee after being treated for hypothermia. Nelson's and Hart's temperatures had dropped to under 80 degrees, Lerch said. Assumed dead Lerch said he and Eichelberger were buried close enough to each other that they could talk. But they had lost contact with their friends and assumed they were dead. Harry used the vent with me for the next several hours until we lost oxygen. Avalanche victims stand a less than 50 percent chance of survival after 10 minutes of burial, he said. About 15 cabin occupants--young members of a Dartmouth College alumni group--quickly responded. Wearing headlamps and using rakes, brooms and mops as probes, they dug out the other three within 30 minutes. A glove sticking out of the snow led them to Lerch, who was aching under the weight of the snow. The other two were located with the help of the makeshift probes. Hart, who died early Sunday at the Truckee hospital, and Nelson were buried in 4 to 6 feet of snow. Chris Seldin of Berkeley said he and other rescuers felt a "tremendous sense of urgency" after Eichelberger reached the cabin. We were all just sitting in his room, like myself and 5 other friends, and the piece of paper on top of this huge stack of would-be novel type writings and stories seems sort of fitting, so I will re-print it here. It was written while Malcolm was in Italy on study abroad last year: The sky stretched tall and blue and stitchless over Venice. I've already got you rubbernecking, appraising the sky in a city that needs no prompting to the command. The sky is the one thing that finds itself in all of our stories, everyone gives it a look, telepathically spatters it with their own Rorscach abortions, makes moony comments about the moon. Anyways, it is time to go and rejoin my friends and drink and laugh some more, and maybe talk to some more Daily Cal reporters who have already sort of messed up the real story. Yeah, I should mention that Malcolm was not able to walk around for a little while before collapsing and then going into cardiac arrest. When he was pulled from the snow, his hand was twitching a little bit and he groaned as they pulled him out, but from what we know he was never conscious from when they found him.
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