A British climber and her American companion have been rescued after being stranded on a mountain in India’s Himalayan region for three days.
Fay Manners, alongside Michelle Dvorak, were ascending a steep section of the Chaukhamba-3 peak in India’s Uttarakhand state when a rockfall severed their rope, sending their bags and crucial supplies like food, tent and climbing gear into a gorge.
Left without most of their communication equipment, they managed to send out an emergency message on Thursday.
The pair were afraid they would die after having to survive with nothing but a sleeping bag in a -15C snowstorm.
“We both barely survived the night. We were destroyed and we were losing faith,” Manners told The Telegraph.
Manners had lost all of her warmer clothes alongside climbing gear and essentials. Without the equipment to move traverse steep glaciers, nor the provisions to stay put, they feared no one would rescue them.
Eventually they opted to descend the mountain themselves.
A recue helicopter tasked with finding the pair flew past the stranded climbers twice as they were forced to watch, unable to wave it down.
The rescue operation took around 80 hours to complete and involved the Indian air force and the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority.
It came after a French mountaineering team, which was also attempting to climb the Chaukhamba-3 peak, located the stranded climbers and relayed their coordinates to authorities.
Manners said: “What would have happened if those climbers had not come to rescue us?
“We would have either frozen to death or attempted to cross steep glaciers without the right equipment and slipped to our peril.”
The Indian air force said in a statement on social platform X that it airlifted the climbers on Sunday “from 17,400 feet, showcasing remarkable coordination in extreme conditions.”
Despite her brush with death, Manners has no plans on quitting climbing.
Chaukhamba-3 is a mountain peak in the Garhwal Himalaya in northern India.
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