Survival against the odds

In 1979 the plane carrying Norman Ollestad and his father, slammed into a mountain. Ollestad, the only survivor, had to find his way to safety

“I woke up in a blizzard and heavy fog—it was cold and windy. It took me a while to piece together that there were bodies sprawled about me. The pilot was definitely dead. Sandra was alive but had a dislocated shoulder. I saw my father crumpled behind my seat rack. I shook him and I spoke to him, but he didn’t wake up. I told myself he was just knocked out—I think that was something I had to do psychologically, just say to myself that he was only knocked out…”

So began 11-year old Norman Ollestad’s remarkable nine-hour struggle to survive — a struggle which he alone would win. Now, nearly three decades after the horrific air crash into a mountain on February 19th, 1979, Ollestad has returned to these memories to tell his story of struggle, survival, and how his relationship with his father ultimately saved his life. Now a father himself, Ollestad recounts his experience with the retrospective insight of his father’s unabashed thirst for life—a thirst that Ollestad now happily passes on to his own son, and to readers of his gripping memoir, Crazy for the Storm.

How would you describe what kept you going throughout those nine hours? What was going through your head?

I was in survival mode, which is an instinct that I think we all have in us. That instinct mixed with the fact that my father and I had had so many adventures from the time I was three –- back country skiing, training for ski racing, surfing, navigating the swells and so forth. I had a really close relationship with my father… we had a bond, and that’s what we did together. I’d faced a lot of fear in those adventures. So it was that culmination of shock and animal instinct kicking in, paired with the fact that I was used to having to tap into that instinct, used to having to face fear and think on my toes. Those adventures with my father also meant that I knew the specifics of the situation. I knew ice pretty well, and snow and the mountains. So I sort of knew how to get through the duration. It was once I made it down the mountain that I began to truly feel the pain of my experience.

I can’t imagine the kind of courage it took to relive those hours when writing this memoir; what made you decide to put your story in writing nearly 30 years after the event?

Well, I have a son now and my son and I started doing the same things that my father did with me when he was about four. When he hit around the age of six, I began to realize that I understood my father’s point of view much more clearly. I wanted to share the same passion that my father shared with me with my own son. I told my son about the plane crash in detail in the car on the way to a ski trip in Mammoth — he’s actually on their little ski team now. By the end, when we had reached Mammoth, he said to me: “You should make that into a book.” That’s when I began to realize that I should, that I wanted to, and that I could now tell both sides of the story. I had my side and I had my father’s side.

What kind of emotional challenges did you face when writing the book?

There was a lot of them. I returned to the mountain twice and I hiked that exact route. One of the rescuers still lives up there and knew the route well — he knew all the details of the crash. I was actually surprised at how well this worked out. With reports from the crash, he helped me figure out everything that happened on that flight — where the flight went wrong and so forth. We actually re-flew the route, which was nauseating. The days that I sat down to write — three to five hours of physically writing a day — were ok. But the moment I would finish writing I’d have a low-grade fever and have to spend the rest of the day sleeping deeply and exercising to try to break the cycle of wanting to sleep, that sort of downward spiral. I felt sick and it would take a lot of exhausting work just to get ready to write the next day. This didn’t occur when I was actually writing because there was a certain satisfaction in slowly retelling the story.

You illustrate your relationship with your father in the book as both profound and complicated. How did your perception of this relationship change as you grew up after the crash?

Immediately after the crash, I stayed in the mind frame that he was my hero but I was conflicted about it. It was when I got back into surfing, maybe six months or a year after the crash, that this mindset began to change. I was able to tap back into the beauty of being on the water, of riding waves — stuff I did with my father. He was the one who really taught me how to do it, and I really started to appreciate it. He always told me I’d thank him one day — he’d say again and again: “Learn how to surf... get after it.” It was when I started surfing again and realised that he was right that I developed a deeper appreciation for him — it sort of pulled me out of that conflicted downward spiral after the crash.

What was it like to start taking on those outdoor adventure sports again so soon after the crash?

I'd go to the same places I had been with my father. I knew how to handle them, I was good at them, and I immediately gained confidence again. It made me feel better about myself and I found so much pleasure in it.

Before the crash, your father pushed you to take on physical and mental challenges that most people would consider too dangerous for a child of your age. Although the book tells us how this gave you the strength to survive, are there ways in which that constant urging had a negative effect on you emotionally?

Yeah. A big part of it was that I was not getting to do what I wanted to do, which was hang out with my friends, go to birthday parties and ride bikes. It was the fact that I never had the ability to determine my own hobbies or the sports that I wanted to do. He made me try to do them all, and I didn’t get a choice in that — that was kind of the negative side of it. But the thing is, now I’m just so thankful that he did it! But at the time it felt a little oppressive.

You mentioned that you now do many of the same adventure sports with your son Noah that you did with your father. Did the negative aspects of your experience with him affect how you do things with Noah?

Yeah. I still have that passion and energy. But I think I do a pretty good job of not imposing that on him. I don’t say ‘you have to do this’ or ‘you’ve got to try that’, I just keep exposing him to new things and continuing to offer them to him, and I’m pretty relentless. But if he turns me down, that’s okay — I’ll just try again tomorrow.

In the epilogue, you describe your return to the area of the crash with your son in 2006. What was the most significant aspect of bringing Noah to the scene of your ordeal?

Well I brought him to the ranch house where I ended up at that day. I showed him the rocking chairs and the stove, and it was a subtle thing but you could see it in his eyes. His eyes were alive… they had electricity in them. I could just see his mind turning, absorbing it all, looking up at the sheet from the ranch and putting it all together. But the best part of it was that after doing that for a few minutes, he wanted to go play with the other kids. I like the fact that he put it together, sucked it in, and didn’t have to dwell on it or turn it into something else—the fact that he could move on and go out to horse around with the other kids in the forest.

That passion and energy is the very thing that many of WideWorld’s readers are seeking in their own outdoor excursions and adventures. What advice can you give them about balancing the will to test yourself in the outdoors with the responsibilities that we have to friends and family?

I think when you’re there, you go for it… how far you want to push yourself is your own individual thing. But I do hold back to some extent because I don’t want to get hurt and not be able to go have a great Saturday with my six year-old. That’s how I approach it, but everyone has their own way of approaching it. To each their own.

Crazy for the Storm was published by Ecco in June. It is out in paperback in August.