Editor’s note: Steph Anderson, a photo intern for the Daily News last summer, is entering her senior year at Missouri State, where she is a journalism major and a goaltender for the school’s Division I field hockey team. The injuries she suffered on Mount Marathon last year forced her to miss a season of field hockey but she has since returned to action. This summer, Anderson is interning at the Tribune-Review in Greensburg, Pa.
Steph Anderson's self-portrait in the helicopter.
BY STEPH ANDERSON
It’s hard to believe a year has passed since my potentially life-threatening fall while covering Mount Marathon, my last assignment as photo intern with the Daily News.
It took me two hours to pass vegetation halfway up the mountain, and before I knew it, the racers were already within photographing distance. I shot them climbing on all fours up the mountain, splashing tiny cups of water on themselves at midpoint and running uncontrollably on their descent.
Racers scramble up the mountain. Photo by Steph Anderson
The fewer racers I saw, the more I knew I must start safely trekking back to submit my photos for deadline. Since I was unfamiliar with the mountain, I followed the remaining runners as they sat on boulders and slowly scooted their way down as a chilling creek that soaked through their underwear. Eventually, I found the trail I followed up the mountain, which required climbing tree roots, like a ladder, about 60 feet high.
Then I began to gradually slip. I tried to shove my fingers into the moving soil beneath me. My momentum was so great I couldn’t feel my injuries while I face-planted repeatedly against stocky tree roots, pinecone-freckled turf and jagged rocks.
I screamed.
Luckily, I fell far enough — 50 or 60 feet — that people heard instantly, and I was conscious to do so. “We hear you!” their voices echoed in the woods. A man held my hand as another yanked my disfigured leg into place. After I was carried away to the Seward hospital on a gurney, I told photographer Marc Lester to find my camera. He whipped it out and started photographing me strapped in a neck brace. I never smiled so big.
In the Seward hospital. Photo by Marc Lester
Being transported to the helicopter. Photo by Marc Lester
Smiling and ready for takeoff. Photo by Marc Lester
Over the course of two surgeries, roughly a week in the hospital, a broken left ankle, a severely sprained right ankle, deep wounds, bruises, cuts and all, I had a generous amount of time to think, even though I would often fall asleep with my meals partially spilled in my speckled green XXL hospital gown at Providence Alaska Medical Center.
Editing photos in the hospital. Photo by Marc Lester
The photo staff of five would bring Moose’s Tooth Pizza and keep me company. Anne Raup woke me one day to give me a card from the entire paper. As soon as I opened it, a thick pile of $20 bills covered my lap. I cried and she did too. “I know you will pay it forward,” she said. I didn’t count it until I went home to Pittsburgh—$451.
Photojournalism pays forward as well. The stories we report, the photos we make and the information we publish can — as corny as it sounds — change our world and community.
I never met a group of people who took me under its wing like the ADN photo staff. I came wanting to grow as a photojournalist, and I left as a more mature human being with a solid group of friends and mentors who sincerely have my back. Wherever my career may lead, I will never forget my roots in Anchorage — or the actual roots I fell from in Seward.
