Beyond the Archive: Debriefing a Story With its Subject Twelve Years Later
After one of my favorite features disappeared from the Internet, I reconnected with the main subject of the piece. He was glad it was gone, but not for reasons I expected.
I consider it both disconcerting and a badge of honor that my journalism career has managed to outlast some of my favorite articles on the Internet. Music profiles I wrote for Playboy vanished from the web after Hugh Heffner’s print magazine shut down in 2020. And when Outside’s parent company merged Rock and Ice with Climbing Magazine, they must have botched the website migration because a 2019 feature I wrote about missing climbers in Argentina went Poof! from digital existence.
So, the adage “things live forever on the Internet” turns out to be fickle when it comes to journalism, which as a writer can feel disheartening. All that hard work gone in a maze of 404 links.
But for the human subjects of those stories? The disappearing act can bring relief. That probably seems obvious for anyone who may have come across in a negative light, or doesn’t want Internet sleuths reading about their past misdeeds and dastardly behavior. Recently, however, I was reminded that it can also be true for subjects whom readers regarded positively—even as heroic.
The reminder hit me after I left my salaried magazine job in Denver a few weeks ago to return to the choppy seas of freelance writing. I’ve decided I want to take another crack at focusing on longer-term narrative projects before whatever’s left of the traditional news, publishing, and film industries completely implodes. And so I pulled out a white board and bullet-pointed my best story leads—what I call holy shit stories that have compelling characters, action, cultural relevance, and stakes—and it occurred to me that I shouldn’t rule out revisiting some of my previous reporting. After all, in my early journalism career I’d come across a few situations that, in hindsight, had much more potential—as either print features, podcasts, books, or film adaptations—than I’d realized and taken advantage of.
This includes one piece that a friend and I had given away to an adventure blog for free (*face palm*) while we were in the beginning stages of our writing careers and were bicycling across the world together. The 6,000-word piece hinged on a dramatic mountain rescue that we had heard was in progress while we were cycling through the Republic of Georgia, along the border with Russia. My buddy and I ditched our bikes and hiked up to a base camp to cover every twist and turn in the rescue operation. And like some of the articles I mentioned earlier, our chronicle of the rescue has since gone MIA from the Internet. You can’t find it unless you know the URL and plug it into the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. So I figured: maybe there was a chance of resurrecting it with some new reporting that explored the psychological aftermath for the people involved.
That’s why two weeks ago on a sunny Saturday in LA’s Griffith Park, I met up with the protagonist of the story. I’ll call him “Andy.” He’s a climber from the Caucasus region, and when I’d looked him up recently, I was surprised to discover that he now lives in Southern California, quite close to my parents who I was already scheduled to visit.
Andy and I had not seen each other since 2012, when we were both 8,000 feet up in the Caucasus Mountains. The context was this: he’d traveled to high alpine region to climb an iconic peak, then got trapped on an avalanche-prone slope when a massive blizzard blanketed the mountain range. The same storm killed two Ukrainian mountaineers, one whose body I watched get airlifted out of a steep valley by an old Soviet chopper. Another large contingent of Russian alpinists had aborted their own expedition, its ragtag climbers descending the mountainside in chaos and defeat. All the while, a coalition of international rescuers was trying—and failing—to reach Andy in his precarious position on a ledge thousands of feet higher.
In other words, there was a lot of drama going on, which my friend (and fellow reporter) and I had watched breathlessly from base camp. We sat there for four or five days, scribbling quotes and observations in our notepads, while climbers and helicopters continuously fell short of reaching Andy. Pretty much everyone abandoned hope for his rescue. More than one climber told us he was a goner. And then, like a ghost, Andy walked into base camp on his own, having decided to save himself in a risky technical descent using a rope and a few ice screws. My friend and I were able to interview the climber for about 10 minutes before he was whisked down the rest of the mountain to a hospital. We published our piece about a month or two after that. But I hadn’t talked to Andy since our brief interview.
“Your piece was quite nice,” Andy told me as we hiked up to the Griffith Observatory. “But I hated the attention.”
The climber told me some important context around his ordeal 12 years ago, the most important of which was that he had not asked to be rescued. Rather, he claimed the rescue team’s orders that he stay put—relayed to him by cell phone—had almost killed him since it caused him to run out of food and energy. He had made his daring self-rescue at the last possible moment. And while Andy acknowledged the newsworthiness of our original coverage—after all, a couple other climbers died—he portrayed himself as someone who deliberately takes on solo mountaineering projects without publicizing his exploits or putting others in danger. Being the subject of a huge rescue operation and so much press (particularly in the Caucasus countries of Armenia and Georgia) was deeply uncomfortable for someone who considers himself antithetical to the social media- and sponsorship-driven culture of modern-day climbing.
I found it eye-opening to debrief my own reporting 12 years later with the star subject of a piece. The conversation was a helpful reminder that the long tail of the Internet isn’t always in everyone’s interest—even someone who readers had praised and lauded for bravery. While from an outside perspective Andy had survived this incredible test of determination and grit, he would have preferred to keep those details to himself.
The only reason I’m sharing this experience—although I’ve changed his name and left out prominent details—is because Andy wasn’t asking for a retraction. He told me I could even make a few updates to original article if I wanted. He had no idea the piece wasn’t available online anymore until I told him.
“Oh, that’s good,” he said with a smile. “No offense.”
The irony is that Andy also told me that our article was the only one that acknowledged he’d saved himself all on his own. Apparently all the press in Armenia and Georgia erroneously stated that the rescue team came to his salvation. Now, those versions of the story are the only ones to survive online.
Some Housekeeping and Announcements
While I’m actively pursuing a couple longer projects, including a potential book, I’m well aware that the freelance journalism market is trickier than ever. I’m ever on the hunt for part-time gigs and contracts. Those certainly include reported story assignments, especially those in the spirit of this newsletter. But if you or anyone you know needs any contractors in the realms of fact-checking, private investigation, ghostwriting, or podcast producing, let me know! I’d really appreciate it. My email is chris@chrisallanwalker.com
Speaking of podcasts, I am teaching a 4-week Zoom class called Introduction to Podcasting and Audio Storytelling starting next Wednesday, April 24. There are still 9 spots available, and this is my third time teaching the class for Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop. It’s a blast. During the course we go over such topics as: interview techniques, writing for the ear, narration strategies, recording, editing, and how to distribute podcasts. You’ll even produce your own narrative clip in the style of Serial and This American Life before the course is over. I’d love to have you join us! If you have any questions about the course, feel free to reach out at my email above.
Finally, freelancing can be kind of lonely. While I’m excited about my independence and this next phase of my career, I will miss being in a newsroom full of talented colleagues like I had at 5280 Magazine. So basically what I’m saying is: don’t ever hesitate to drop a line if you want to talk shop, or even just to say hi. I’m grateful for community and your readership.
-Chris