Society of the Snow

By: Pablo Vierci

Location: NF 920 Exploration

Genre: Survival Story

This book is written by a journalist who is friend with the victims of the Andes's tragedy. He interviews each of the 16 survivors and retold the story using the memories and the feeling of these amazing men. They survived 72 days in the mountain without food and with very frozen temperatures. And still their memories are plenty of hope and affection for each other.

This is the story of the society of the snow.

It was 13 October 1972. Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, carrying a team of young rugby players, their families and friends, took off for the very last time. A deadly miscalculation saw F571 crash directly into the Andean mountains to devastating consequences: the body of the plane broke violently into two, its floor torn to smithereens; seats flew out of the air taking passengers with them. In the weeks that followed, the remaining people who were on board - the society of the snow - emerged to fight a dire, gruelling battle for survival.

Waiting for a rescue team that didn't arrive, the survivors became fewer and fewer in numbers. Stranded alone on a glacier, they had to face brutal temperatures, lethal avalanches and the loss of friends and family with no access to supplies, food or water. In order to survive, they had to do the unthinkable . . . It wasn't until seventy-two days later that they were able to reach safety.

Alarmingly gritty, moving and powerfully told, journalist Pablo Vierci recounts the unsettling stories of the sixteen survivors in intimate detail. Drawing on exclusive interviews, Society of the Snow delves into the tragedy of the crash and how it radically redefined the rest of the survivors' lives. Ultimately, however, the book is a touching testament to the strength of faith, friendship, and the resilience of the human spirit.

"There are many different reasons why I paint, but without intending it I always recreate the same scene over and over again: a group of boys with outstretched arms, standing on the freezing mountain with two helicopters arriving from the valley. I paint them again and again, but what is most curious is that every time I paint them I count the boys, never knowing whether they are greeting the helicopters when they arrive or saying goodbye when they leave. I count them and I count them again, and with tears in my eyes I always discover that there are more than sixteen. -Coche Inciarte"