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Fay Manners, 37, and her American friend Michelle Dvorak, 31, lost almost all of their equipment, food and water in a rockfall as they tried to become the first people to summit the 6995m Chaukhamba III in India last week.
The professional climbers were left to survive for two nights in temperatures as low as -15C in nothing but a sleeping bag and could only watch as a rescue helicopter flew by twice without spotting them.
They were found on Saturday by a team of French mountaineers who were in the area for their own attempt on the remote peak – which Manners said was a “small miracle”.
The pair said they felt hypothermic after losing their food, tent and warm clothing in a rockfall. Photo / Fay Manners
She told Britain’s Daily Telegraph: “What would have happened if those climbers had not come to rescue us?
“We would have either frozen to death or attempted to cross the steep glaciers without the right equipment and slipped to our peril.”
Manners and Dvorak set out on their expedition to climb Chaukhamba III from a base camp on the nearby Satopanth Glacier on September 27.
But six days later, on Thursday, they were climbing up a rock spur 700m below the summit when a sudden rockfall severed a rope they were using to haul a rucksack behind them.
“I watched the bag tumble down the mountain and I immediately knew the consequence of what was to come,” Manners said.
The bag contained the pair’s tent and stove and all of Manners’ warm clothing, crampons and ice axes, meaning they were now in danger of freezing, starving or falling to their deaths in crevasses if they tried to cross the glacier to get back to base camp.
Fay Manners lost her equipment while trekking up India’s Chaukhamba III mountain.
‘My body was running out of energy’
“We found a ledge, it started snowing and we luckily had our double sleeping bag in the other bag we could crawl into for that night. I was freezing, my down trousers, thicker socks and all the warmer clothes I had in my bag for the evenings were no longer accessible.”
That night, having sent out an emergency SOS, they survived a -15C snowstorm.
“I felt hypothermic, constantly shaking and with the lack of food my body was running out of energy to keep warm,” Manners recalled.
On Friday, she and Dvorak saw a rescue helicopter approach – but it flew by without spotting them.
Fearing that no one would be able to rescue them in the “brutal” conditions, they decided to descend the mountain themselves.
But progress was slow because of their lack of equipment and they were forced to survive another night in just the sleeping bag.
“Saturday morning came, we both barely survived the night,” Manners said. “The helicopter flew past again but couldn’t see us. We were destroyed and we were losing faith.”
As they continued their descent – during which Manners said she thought of nothing but “solutions on how we could survive” – a team of three experienced French mountaineers were searching for them.
The trio – Palin Clovis, Jacques Olivier Chevallier and Vivien Berlaud – had been aiming to summit Chaukhamba III themselves but gave up to find the missing women after being alerted to their peril by one of Manners’ friends.
“As we were abseiling down on Saturday we could see a team of climbers coming up the mountain towards us,” Manners said.
“When we reached them, they said they were there to help us and I cried with relief knowing we might survive.
Fay Manners and Michelle Dvorak survived two nights in sub-zero temperatures.
“They supported us to get across the steep glacier that would have been impossible without our equipment, crampons and ice axes.
“They gave us their tent and sleeping bags, gave us water and food and finally told the helicopter where to come and collect us.”
At 7am local time on Sunday, an Indian air force helicopter landed at 5300 metres above sea level on the Panpatia Bank Glacier and airlifted Manners and Dvorak to safety in Joshimath, a town 34km to the south-east.
Colonel Madan Gurung, who co-ordinated the rescue operation for the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF), said the women were found to be “exhausted” but in otherwise “perfectly fine” health.
“Their experience as mountaineers helped them conserve food and energy, which was crucial for their survival over the 55 hours they were stranded,” he said.
From Joshimath, Manners is travelling to New Delhi where she plans to “eat plenty of local food, relax my mind and sleep as much as possible” over the coming days.
But despite her brush with death, the professional climber, who has opened eight new mountain routes in the past eight years, has no plans to give up mountaineering.
“I want to go home and go climbing in Europe in the sun,” she said. “But I will avoid the big mountains until the winter comes.”
