A Palos Hills native who spent five days trapped in the mountains of Nepal after a devastating earthquake is back home with family.
Corey Ascolani, 34, arrived at Chicago’s Midway Airport on Wednesday afternoon, greeted by about 20 family members and friends who let out a cheer as soon as they saw him coming down the escalator to the baggage claim.
Ascolani jogged down the final steps, hugged his mom, Christine Bregar, and dad, Joseph Ascolani, then hugged each family member in turn before returning to give Bregar a long bear hug, with his blue backpack still strapped on.
He said he was surprised and a little overwhelmed to see the group gathered.
“I didn’t know how stressed I was until I was out of it,” Ascolani said. “The more time that passes, the more I realize how … close I was to where all the devastation was and how lucky I am. I keep seeing pictures of the places I was going to that day or later that day.”
Ascolani was hiking in a valley in Langtang National Park, about 90 miles north of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck April 25.
The full extent of the damage is still unknown but officials recently said the death toll climbed to 7,250, the Associated Press reported earlier this week. The U.N. said the earthquake affected 8.1 million people, more than a quarter of Nepal’s population.
It also triggered landslides, blocking the trails Ascolani was hiking. Ascolani, who has been teaching in Spain, was scouting the area ahead of a trip to Mount Everest he planned to take with a childhood friend in September.
One of the 26 hikers Ascolani was trapped with after the earthquake had a satellite phone they could use to contact family. Still, it was two days before Bregar got any news about her son.
“Knowing that he was OK, that was the first thing,” Bregar said. “When I got a text from the daughter of one of the women he was with, that made all the difference.”
Ascolani also asked them to push the U.S. Embassy to help arrange an evacuation by helicopter before the satellite phone’s batteries ran out, since the trails they were hiking were no longer passable.
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He said the group he was with, including a fellow trekker he met at a meditation camp, stayed relatively calm and worked together well, building makeshift helipads to help with their evacuation.
“It was just that the area was very dangerous, and we were always scared and frightened,” he said.
After five days, helicopters came for the hikers. Ascolani said he was the first to spot them and ran back to tell the group.
“Everyone already had their bags packed and was running,” he said.
Ascolani was taken to the U.S. Embassy to wait for a flight out of Kathmandu.
Bregar said her first thought when watching him approach at the airport was, “Oh, my God, I get to hold him again.”
“It’s a lot of emotion,” she said. “You don’t realize how stressed you are until the stress is released.”
Ascolani said he planned to keep traveling before the earthquake and had two months left on his visa in Nepal, but now plans to spend some time with friends and family and relax at home.
He also wants to work to raise funds to help with earthquake relief in some of the more remote areas affected by the earthquake and said he’s already found someone to coordinate the work on the ground in Nepal.
Ascolani said he plans to return to Nepal eventually, but for now, he’s staying close to home.
“After something like that, I felt like I needed to see friends and family,” he said.
Naperville Sun reporter Suzanne Baker contributed.
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