When Nando Parrado took off on a flight from Uruguay to Chile with his rugby team-mates, he was looking forward to an enjoyable weekend break and had invited his mother and sister along for the trip. Then disaster struck, as their plane crashed into a mountain. Miraculously, many of the passengers survived but Nando's family died and he was unconscious for three days. Stranded 11 000 feet up on an inhospitable glacier, the survivors had almost no food or suitable equipment to withstand temperatures as low as -40C. In a final, desperate bid for safely, Nando and one of his friends set off on an impossible journey, climbing 17 000 feet-high mountains, facing death at every step.