Brisbane doctor James Scott speaks 30 years after surviving 43 days lost in Himalayas
It was a story that stunned the world – the miraculous rescue of a young man lost for 43 freezing days in the Himalayas. Thirty years later, Brisbane doctor James Scott reflects on his ordeal, how he survived, and how he made the most of his ‘bonus’ years of life.
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James Scott, who stunned the world with his miraculous survival after being lost in the Himalayas for 43 freezing days, has revealed how the terrifying ordeal changed him and what he has done with his 30 bonus years of life.
The intensely private Brisbane doctor, who went missing in a blizzard in Nepal in late 1991, sheltered under a rock for six weeks as his desperate relatives were repeatedly told to abandon their costly search mission.
Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Mail ahead of the 30-year anniversary of his sensational rescue, Dr Scott, now aged 53 and an eminent child and youth psychiatrist, said the gift of life was “so precious”.
“I’ve had 30 years I shouldn’t have had – I’m thankful all the time,” he said.
“Since the misadventure I’ve made a real, intentional effort to keep getting on with my life as I would have lived it anyway.
“I’ve tried not to be distracted by Nepal but, really, I had only a one in a million chance of making it out alive.”
Dr Scott’s incredible story of courage, determination and strength made headlines around the globe.
The fifth-year University of Queensland medical student with a black belt in karate had defied the odds, earning him the nickname Ice Man.
So shocking was his survival in subzero temperatures that when he was finally winched to safety by helicopter on February 3, 1992, villagers rushed the tarmac to touch his emaciated body – for good luck. Others around the world doubted the story could even be true.
The then 23-year-old had existed on drinking melted snow, with no food except for two bars of Cadbury milk chocolate eaten within the first 48 hours, and one hapless caterpillar.
He used his medical knowledge to reduce his risk of hypothermia, and the mental strength of his karate training and the love of his family and fiancee Gaye Ryan to get him through.
Reflecting candidly, the softly spoken Dr Scott said the ordeal taught him about the enormous power of the human spirit.
“I would have done just fine without the chocolate bars (not Mars bars, as famously reported) as they brought me a lot of headaches,” he said.
“I was pretty fit and lost about 25kg – my body just ate itself – but I had abundant fresh water through snow, a strong faith, and the determination not to let my loved ones grieve.
“I survived by maintaining a sense of perspective, knowing there was always someone worse off than I was – like the Australian soldiers in prison camps in World War II and the patients I’d seen in the burns ward during my medical training.”
In his darkest hours, Dr Scott admits to feeling suicidal. “There were times when I really couldn’t see any point continuing on, but something would always happen to lift me up,” he said.
“In those very last 72 hours, hope escaped me and I had really suicidal intent, but then I had a vivid dream of being home with my family and when I woke it reminded me of how much I had to live for.”
ALL I HAD WAS HOPE
Unbeknown to Dr Scott, a huge search effort was under way, led by his older sister Joanne Robertson.
“Around this time every year, I still have nightmares about dead bodies in the snow,” said Dr Robertson, 57, a Clayfield vet.
“We were so very fortunate, and that overwhelming relief never leaves you.”
It was not until a week after Dr Scott disappeared, in the blizzard locals assured him would not eventuate, that his family was notified.
Father Ken Scott, a biochemistry professor at the University of Queensland, and mother Janet, a botanist, were stricken and waited by the phone in their St Lucia home for updates.
The family was warned by the Department of Foreign Affairs not to travel to Nepal, to let local authorities handle it. But in early January, after several false sightings of the fit, red-headed Australian, Dr Robertson took charge.
“I thought, ‘bugger this, no one will care as much as a family member’, and I was the obvious person to go,” she told The Courier-Mail.
“Dead or alive, James had to be somewhere; the only thing worse than finding a body was to find nothing.
“Dad had said to me, ‘only when you come home, Joanne, is when we know there is no hope’, so I had the weight of his rescue upon my shoulders.”
Dr Robertson – accompanied by Andrew Ross, her brother’s best friend from their school days at St Peter’s Lutheran College in Indooroopilly – landed in Nepal on January 8, 1992.
Over the next few weeks they would work tirelessly, bolstered by generous donations from friends and strangers back home in a self-funded $70,000 rescue effort.
“We were just kids, really, and I was told to go home many times but for my own mental health I had to assure myself I had done everything I possibly could, no matter how crazy,” Dr Robertson said. “It was one thing to think he’d fallen and died quickly, but to have lived with the concept James was sitting there suffering while I was failing to find him is inconceivable.”
While standing in a taxi queue in Kathmandu towards the end of the frantic and frustrating search, a local man wearing a Surfers Paradise T-shirt came up to Dr Robertson and said there was a different trail her brother might have taken. “A religious lama also told me James was alive and exactly which valley he was in. You have to understand, James and I are very ordinary people. I’m a vet, I’m science-based; all I was was determined, logical, lucky and prepared to try anything.”
NAMASTE, DR SCOTT
It was a deathly frail Dr Scott who, on the icy morning of February 2, 1992, crawled out from under his rock shelter after hearing the pulsing of a helicopter.
It would be the third time he’d tried waving his blue sleeping bag to attract the attention of an aircraft circling the valley. He believed it would be his last – that one-in-a-million chance.
Thirty years have not dulled his memories of that momentous day.
“I was out in a clear patch and they were circling closer and closer, and they waved out the window and I knew I’d been spotted,” Dr Scott said.
“It was an amazing feeling, and quite remarkable because this helicopter was purely doing a reconnaissance of where they would look for a body after 42 days.”
On board was Australian ex-pat Tom Crees, an architect who’d be helping with the search and was taking video footage of the area to provide at least some comfort to the Scott family back in Brisbane.
Terrible weather prevented an immediate air rescue so the helicopter flew back to Kathmandu and a party was dispatched on foot, reaching Dr Scott by nightfall.
“I heard muffled shouting coming up the valley but I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating, then a voice called out ‘namaste’ (hello) and I screamed back,” Dr Scott said.
“When they reached me and asked if I was James Scott from Australia, they burst into tears. They sat marvelling at me, stroking my hair and face, and managed to convey no one had survived more than 10 days in the mountains.”
The guides stayed with Dr Scott overnight and the next morning the aircraft returned, and so began the long journey home, and towards recovery.
Dr Robertson will never forget being told her brother had been found alive.
“I was a nervous wreck,” she said.
“They dangled him from the bottom of the helicopter to get him back to (the village of) Talu, where locals were saying, ‘James Scott, you’re a god’, and then they flew him on to Kathmandu and I was standing on the tarmac thinking, ‘Can this really be happening?’.
“Then Tom stepped out with his arms stretched out wide as if to say, ‘Look what I’ve brought you’, and James came out and said, ‘Thank you, I can’t believe you are here’.”
While the next 11 days in Patan Hospital would be touch and go for Dr Scott, who had suffered neurological and eyesight damage, the celebrations were happening right across Brisbane.
“I called Dad and said, ‘It’s Joanne, I’ve found James and he’s alive’,” Dr Robertson said.
“Dad repeated what I’d said and I could hear mum sobbing in the background.”
The family was advised to engage an agent to handle the media storm around Dr Scott’s astonishing survival, and appointed the late Harry M. Miller, who had acted for Lindy Chamberlain after her baby Azaria was taken by a dingo in 1980.
Mr Miller played off rival TV networks and sold the story for $250,000.
“Back then, it never occurred to us that someone would pay money for a story like this,” Dr Robertson said.
“Mum had kept detailed records of the donations and through our share we returned every cent, and those who didn’t want the money back, we gave it to Patan Hospital to say thank you.”
HOW CAN I HELP?
James Scott remains a humble man. Grateful for the 30 years he shouldn’t have had, the respected psychiatrist has put lessons learned on those frigid foothills of the Himalayas towards lifesaving work for others.
The Aspley father of three – who married Gaye, as they had always planned, in Cairns in June 1992 – is one of the unspoken heroes at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, where he specialises in youth mental health.
Dr Scott also practises clinically at the Metro North Mental Health Service as director of the Early Psychosis Service.
“Every week I am seeing young people with very serious problems and one of the key learnings from my misadventure in Nepal is that if you give things time to sort out they generally do,” he said.
“It is important to have hope, draw on the support of loved ones and keep a sense of perspective; you don’t have to look far to find someone worse off than you.”
Dr Scott said nature could also be a healer.
“When I was stuck in the mountains, I had some pretty dark days, but I would get immense pleasure out of watching the bird life and observing the icicles; it would give me a sense of peace.
“I sometimes say to my kids, ‘Those were the most peaceful six weeks of my life’,” he laughed.
When Dr Scott returned from Nepal, on Valentine’s Day 1992, he grappled with feelings of guilt over what he had put his loved ones through.
He also had unrealistic expectations of how quickly he would recover, physically and mentally.
But apart from a few days after his rescue, he had no more nightmares, and the emotional scars some predicted would haunt him for years didn’t materialise.
His eyesight has remained compromised, although true to his resilience and optimism, he has learned to adjust to the result of a vitamin B1 deficiency that damaged the part of the brain that controls eye movement and balance.
“As simplistic as it sounds, no difficulty is impossible to overcome,” said Dr Scott, who in 2018 received the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ senior research award for his “significant contribution to psychiatric research”.
“Years ago when I was deciding my career focus, my eyesight damage excluded me from so many fields of medicine,” he said.
“Life puts up road blocks and you can continue to hammer against them or be like water and run around them, so I thought, ‘I can’t do a lot of things, but what can I do?’”
Psychiatry was an obvious choice, but Dr Scott said it was “so out of vogue” that many people were bemused.
“Back then, the impact of trauma was largely unrecognised, and there was stigma around mental illness,” he said. “If someone was feeling suicidal, people would say, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?’, but things have come a long way since.”
Dr Scott said working in medicine was “a real privilege”. “Young people come to see with me the most debilitating illnesses and we can provide them with transformative care and help them fully recover,” he said.
“Children by themselves don’t survive – they need support structures around them – so unless you attend to those surrounding systems also, including families, schools, universities and workplaces, you can’t really make a difference.
“But gosh, I do get such a lot of joy out of seeing kids get well, and I am forever grateful that I made it out of Nepal alive and have been able to contribute to the world.”
Where is Dr James Scott now?
Professor James Scott leads the Child and Youth Research Group at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. He also practices clinically as a Child and Youth Psychiatrist with the Metro North Mental Health Service, where he is the Director of the Early Psychosis Service.
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