By the accounts of the survivors who waited, the period between December 12 and the arrival of the helicopters on December 22 was among the most psychologically difficult of the entire ordeal. The uncertainty was total. The group at the fuselage had no way of knowing whether Parrado and Canessa were alive, whether they had reached help, whether rescue was coming. They had to continue performing the daily tasks of survival while holding the possibility that those tasks might be pointless because the two trekkers had failed or died.
Vizintín’s return on December 15 brought them some information: the trek was continuing, the trekkers had reached the ridge and were descending into Chile. But Vizintín had turned back before the trekkers reached anyone; he knew only that they were alive and moving when he left them. After December 15, the group at the fuselage had no further information.
They managed this uncertainty the same way they had managed earlier uncertainties: by continuing to function, by maintaining the collective care for one another, by drawing on the same faith and collective discipline that had sustained them through the previous nine weeks.
When the helicopters appeared over the valley rim on December 22, the survivors who had been waiting understood immediately what it meant. The two men had made it.
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## Numbers and Names
The formal accounting of the 1972 Andes crash involves numbers that are worth laying out clearly, because the popular narrative sometimes conflates or confuses them.
The aircraft carried 45 people: 40 passengers and 5 crew.