Frostbite

FROSTBITE
A Wilderness Survival Novella
By Rorke Galt

The ice held.
Until it didn’t.

Mick has crossed this lake every January for twenty-two years. He knows the sound good ice makes. He knows the wind. He knows the cold.

At 8:14 a.m., seventy yards from shore, the surface disappears beneath him.

Thirty-one-degree water. Five miles from his truck. No one expecting him back until nightfall.

What follows is not a dramatic fight against nature — it is something quieter, more exact. A step-by-step accounting of what cold actually does to a human body. The shivering. The motor failure. The memory lapses. The moment when warmth feels real — and isn’t.

As his core temperature drops and his mind begins to fragment, Mick must rely on training, discipline, and the thin margin between knowledge and instinct to reach the highway before his body shuts down.

Cold is not an adversary.
It is information.

FROSTBITE is a clinically realistic wilderness survival novella grounded in documented hypothermia progression and field protocol. No melodrama. No rescue fantasy. Just the long walk out.

For readers of Jack London, modern backcountry realism, and survival narratives rooted in technical accuracy.