How French climber on Pakistan’s ‘killer mountain’ was forced to leave behind her friend to save her life
The record-breaking climber also hallucinated people offering her hot tea – if she agreed to take off her shoes on the sub-zero mountainside
A French mountaineer who was rescued in a dramatic nighttime operation on Pakistan’s “killer mountain” has told how she had to leave her weak and bleeding partner and descend the peak alone in darkness, beset by hallucinations beckoning her to freeze to death.
Elisabeth Revol, speaking from a hospital in France’s Haute-Savoie region – where doctors are assessing whether she will require amputations due to frostbite in her hands and left foot – said rescuers urged her to leave behind Tomek (Tomasz) Mackiewicz, a Polish national.
[Mackiewicz] began to freeze. His nose became white and then his hands, his feet
Revol had just become the first woman to scale Nanga Parbat in winter, without sherpa or oxygen, when disaster stuck – and forced her to make a “terrible and painful” decision.
It was Revol’s fourth attempt, her third with Mackiewicz, to scale the 8,125-metre (26,660-foot) Nanga Parbat during the winter season, when they ran into trouble amid frigid temperatures and high winds.
An elite group of Polish climbers managed to reach Revol but were unable to get to Mackiewicz, who was stranded further up the mountain.
Revol, who weighed just 43 kilograms (95 pounds) following her ordeal, left France on December 15 and began her adventure with Mackiewicz on January 20.