Mendoza is where they stopped. The Fairchild had come over from Montevideo with forty-five people aboard, a rugby team and their families and friends, and the weather in the cordillera held them a night on the ground. The next afternoon they went on for Santiago. The crew turned north into the Planchón pass earlier than the mountains allowed, and the aircraft came down in Argentina, high up, in snow. That was 1972. Twelve died at once or soon after; more died in the weeks that followed, from injuries, from an avalanche, from the cold.

The air search ran eight days and was called off. The ones still alive heard that on a small radio. In December, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa walked west for ten days and came out above a river, where a Chilean arriero named Sergio Catalán saw them from the far bank, gave them bread, and rode for help. Sixteen came home on the twenty-third. Twenty-nine did not.