CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Sept. 21 -- The University of Virginia issued the following news release:
Halfway up a glacier in Italy's Graian Alps, in pitch-black darkness, a snow bridge gave out, dropping a climber straight down into a crevasse.
But his teammates caught his fall on the rope line, hauled him back onto the ice and kept moving. They didn't dwell on what just happened, but focused on the thousands of feet of glacial ice and sheer rock still between them and the 13,300-foot summit of Gran Paradiso.
Tied into that rope team was Giacomo McDowell, a University of Virginia second-year student majoring in environmental sciences. While many college students spend summer breaks working standard desk jobs, McDowell, a midshipman in UVA's N...