EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, our 11th day on the mountain, I stood outside the fuselage, watching Roy Harley, a tall, gangly wing forward who was the closest we had to an electronics expert, fiddle with a battered transistor radio he'd found in the wreckage. The batteries for the Fairchild's radio were lost along with the tail, but with the transistor we could at least receive some news from the outside world. This morning, like all the others, the signal faded in and out, and Roy was about to turn the set off when we heard, through the buzzing and popping, the tinny voice of an announcer. After ten days of fruitless searching, he said, Chilean authorities had called off efforts to find the lost Uruguayan charter flight that had disappeared over the Andes on October 13.

There was stunned silence. Then Roy began to sob.

"What?" cried Marcelo. "What did he say?"

"Suspendieron la búsqueda!" Roy shouted. "They have canceled the search! They are abandoning us!" Marcelo stared at Roy with a look of irritation, as if he had spoken gibberish, but then Marcelo dropped to his knees and let out an anguished howl that echoed through the cordillera.

My head was swimming. Even though I had always known, deep down, that rescuers would never find us, a part of me lived on that thin hope. Now, if we were to survive, we would survive by our own efforts. The silence of the mountains mocked me, but I knew that sooner or later I would have to climb.

As the days passed, my greatest fear was that we would grow so weak that escape would become impossible—that we would use up all the bodies, leaving us no choice but to languish at the crash site, staring into each other's eyes, waiting to see which of our friends would die and become our food. The thought made me frantic to leave. I knew that I had no chance in those mountains, but what did it matter? I was a dead man already. I would find the courage to do it. But I couldn't go alone. And so I studied the others, imagining which of these ragged, starving, frightened young men I would want by my side.

With Marcelo in despair, my thoughts turned to Roberto—the brilliant, egotistical medical student, strong, clever, and interested in no one's rules but his own. If anyone could stand up to the Andes through sheer stubbornness alone, Roberto was the one.

"We must do it, Roberto, you and I," I said. "We have the best chance of anyone here."

"You're crazy, Nando," he snapped, his voice rising. "Look at these mountains. Do you have any idea how high they are?"

I gazed at the highest peak. "Maybe two or three times the Pan de Azúcar," I said, referring to the tallest "mountain" in Uruguay.

Roberto snorted. "Don't be an idiot!" he screeched. "There's no snow on the Pan de Azúcar! It is only 1,500 feet high! This mountain is ten times higher, at least!"

"But what choice do we have?" I answered. "Please, come with me."

Roberto studied me as if he'd never seen me before. Then he nodded toward the fuselage. "Let's go inside," he said. "The wind is picking up, and I am fucking cold."