Tommy Price remembers nothing of the day he was found face down in the snow on a mountain with no heartbeat.
He doesn’t remember getting dressed in his leggings, jacket, snood and beanie that morning, or running 28 miles of a 30-mile route over Skiddaw and Great Calva in the Lake District.
He doesn’t remember his legs freezing up or trying to skid down a rocky path until his backside bled in 2022.
Tommy was fit, healthy and 26 when he and his friend Max set out to run the legendary fell-running trail the Bob Graham Round in Cumbria on a grey, snowy January morning. A former basketball player and bodybuilder, he was in excellent physical condition and had plenty of mountain running experience when they set off.
‘I can’t remember anything of the run. The mountain rescue doctor said it was like a Word document that doesn’t have autosave when there is a power cut.
‘He thinks I will never remember the day of the accident,’ says Tommy, now 31. His last memory is of parking up in Keswick.
It was 0°C in Cumbria that day, but between minus 15°C and minus 20°C higher up with the wind chill. Tommy and Max had also run through a river, making them much colder, he tells Metro from his home in Huddersfield.
‘Max later told me that as I was running up Blencathra I started dropping to my knees and saying I couldn’t carry on. He kept picking me up and I kept saying I wanted to turn around. That’s when the hypothermia set in. I was delirious.’
As Max ran back and forth trying to keep himself warm while helping his friend, Tommy’s legs stopped working and he started sliding down the mountain, ‘ripping my bum open’. Later, doctors told him he was lucky not to need skin grafts.
With their mobile phones out of battery, they were about a mile from a farm when Tommy’s legs seized up and he could go no further. Max wrapped him in an emergency survival bag before running downhill to call 999 and Mountain Rescue.
‘When they got to me, my survival bag was empty and I was 100 metres up the mountain, face down in the snow. They rolled me over and started doing CPR. Then another responder came and gave me the defibrillator.
‘They gave me three electric shocks and I was in ventricular fibrillation, so I had no heartbeat. My heart wouldn’t work because I was too cold.
‘It was a bit of a shock for them to find a dead person on the mountain. I think they thought they would give me a Snickers and walk me back down.’
With Max kept safe and warm in a rescue van below, Keswick Mountain Rescue Team volunteers Donald Ferguson and Jonny Hume did everything they could to save Tommy.
Team doctor John Ferris later said that becoming so cold before his heart stopped probably helped save Tommy’s life, as the freezing temperatures protected his brain and other organs from permanent damage.
Rescuers carried out manual CPR for an hour and a half before paramedics were able to use a LUCAS machine, which provides mechanical chest compressions, as Tommy was flown by helicopter to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, where life support had been prepared.
As they arrived, the machine ran out of battery and Dr Ferris had to resume manual CPR.
‘I think everybody thought I wasn’t going to make it,’ says Tommy. ‘John Ferris said that in the taxi home from the hospital, after he left me there, he rang Dr Les Gordon, consultant anaesthetist at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay and team doctor for Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team, who said there was a slim chance that I would survive – because nobody survives profound hypothermia.’
Profound hypothermia is a life-threatening medical emergency in which the body’s core temperature falls below around 28°C, causing the body’s vital functions to begin shutting down.
At hospital, Tommy was placed on an ECMO machine, a form of advanced life support that temporarily takes over the function of the heart and lungs by pumping blood outside the body, adding oxygen, removing carbon dioxide and returning the blood to the patient, allowing the organs time to rest and recover.
Meanwhile, Max contacted his friend’s family, who were told he had suffered a cardiac arrest and had been taken to hospital. By the time a police officer arrived at his parents’ home to deliver the news, they were already preparing to travel to Newcastle. They gathered at Tommy’s bedside alongside his brothers, David and Gareth.
‘The doctors told them the risks of ECMO. They said, “It will save his life, but it could also kill him.” It was torture for my family because if I survived, they didn’t know if I would have brain damage,’ explains Tommy.
‘They did a CT scan on the third day to see if I had any blood clots in my brain and there was nothing. The doctor said that was a good sign, but the only way to find out was when I woke up. It was a waiting game.’
He regained consciousness after five days in an induced coma. He doesn’t remember waking up – his earliest memory was of a male nurse feeding him water using a sponge.
‘I had a tube down my throat so my swallow reflex was weird. It was very sore. And I remember my brother David feeding me a grape, but I was sick straight away.’
At first, Tommy assumed he had been in a car crash until his family and Max explained what had happened. There was no brain damage.
‘I was scared that I would never walk again, but I was relieved I had survived. Doctors suggested I might need mobility aids around the house.
’I had nerve damage in my hands and feet so I couldn’t grip or pinch anything.
‘I could just about brush my teeth, but I had no strength in my hands. I couldn’t tie my shoelaces, open a can of pop, turn on the shower or drive. I could use my phone, but it took me a long time to write a text message.
‘It was like being a baby again. I needed a lot of help. My parents didn’t know if I would ever recover.’
The nerve damage, which felt like constant pins and needles, is permanent, although the symptoms have disappeared and he has regained full mobility. The only lasting effect is that his hands become cold much more quickly than before.
After three weeks, Tommy left hospital. Remarkably, just nine months after his heart stopped on the mountainside, he completed the London Marathon in three hours and 10 minutes, raising £10,000 for Keswick Mountain Rescue.
Psychologically, Tommy says he has been left unscarred.
‘I just don’t let it get me down,’ he says matter-of-factly.
‘I look at life positively. It has changed my outlook a little bit. I’m not scared of death. It happens. People don’t believe me when I tell them I’ve died before.’
He’s since returned to fell running with gusto, although he avoids doing it in bad weather. A year after his accident, Tommy completed a 120km race in the Brecon Beacons and has entered other ultra-endurance events.
‘I think my fitness kept me alive. The month before my accident we did a 56-mile run and I completed an Ironman that summer, so I was at peak fitness. I’m the fittest I’ve ever been now,’ he adds.
Tommy has since set up his own dog-walking business, which sees him cover around 100km every week.
‘I can’t thank John Ferris, Jonny and Donald enough. They saved my life – and they are all volunteers. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here today.’
