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Ashley Simpson, 27, and her boyfriend, Robbie, 32, decided that they wanted to climb the Munro mountains in Scotland and set off to do just that. The couple had finished scaling their first peak and were on their way down from the second when it happened.
Simpson stepped on some hidden ice beneath the snow and her feet went out from under her.
“Once I was sliding, I couldn’t stop,” Simpson recalled. “I couldn’t get my feet to dig in and even my poles wouldn’t help.”
It was only when Simpson got caught by a boulder, after the snowbanks had ended, that she finally stopped sliding down the peak.
By then, she’d already fallen 25 meters down a 45-degree slope.
When she was still on the ground recovering, Simpson managed to smile for her boyfriend’s camera before getting up – and hiking the 70 kilometers home.
There was definitely much pain present, but Simpson remembered, “I just wanted off the mountain. … Most people wouldn’t have been able to move but the adrenaline helped me walk the two and a half hours back to the car.”
She and her boyfriend returned home to Edinburgh, where Simpson fed their dog and finally took off her clothes.
That was when she discovered all the bruising across her back. It was “proper black bruising which mean[t] it was [blood] coming from the bones.” Simpson knew she needed to get it checked out.
She went to the hospital, where none of the medical staff realized how badly she was injured because she’d walked in on her own, rather than arrive in a helicopter.
When she finally was examined, the doctors were horrified.
They cut off her clothes, put her in a neck brace, and kept her in the hospital for eight days.
Simpson had broken several ribs and fractured her back in 12 places.
No one could understand how she’d made it back down the mountain in her condition.
Thankfully, Simpson is now well on the road to recovery. The doctors say it will probably be another four weeks before she can return to all normal activities and work hours, but it will take another year for her to return to her full level of fitness.
Simpson is stunned. “About six weeks after [the accident], I realized I could have died. I’m 27 and it’s really affected my life. It’s like grieving for the active person I used to be.”
