Rescue on Everest successful
KATMANDU, Nepal – A woman who became seriously ill while in Mount Everest’s so-called “death zone” and was helped down by fellow climbers has safely reached base camp, Nepalese mountaineering officials said Friday.
Uma Bista of Nepal was “barely coherent” and suffering from cerebral edema, or swelling of the brain, when she was found Monday at about 27,225 feet, below the summit, said veteran climber Dave Hahn, of Taos, N.M.
In Internet dispatches, Hahn said he and other climbers in his group were descending from the summit of the 29,035-foot mountain when they came across Bista.
He and the others managed to carry Bista in a litter to a lower camp at 23,950 feet and handed her over to a British team, which is on the mountain on a medical research mission.
On Wednesday, aided by five Sherpas, she managed to descend the treacherous Lhotse face, a wall of glacial ice, he said.
“She walked down, she climbed down the Lhotse face. Seems like she’s going to recover, and that’s pretty impressive. We didn’t think she’d make it. I didn’t think she’d make it. We’re obviously pretty happy for that,” Hahn said in his dispatch posted on greatoutdoors.com.
Krishna Bhandari of the Nepalese Mountaineering Department said Bista was “at the base camp and safe. We are trying to arrange a helicopter to bring her back to Katmandu.”
Bhandari said officials did not have many details about her experience, and he did not know if she had been abandoned by her fellow climbers before Hahn and his group found her.
The final and most difficult part of Everest – the area above 26,000 feet – is nicknamed the “death zone.” Rescues at such altitude are very difficult because of the thin air, high winds, icy slopes and exhaustion.
Climbers afflicted with high altitude cerebral edema – a sudden, potentially fatal swelling of the brain – display confusion, hallucinations and semiconsciousness and need to descend immediately and receive oxygen and medication.
Dozens of climbers scaled Everest in the last two weeks from the Nepalese side of the mountain. Weather conditions on the mountain had been unfavorable until last week.
The climbing season began in March and ends in late May when the annual monsoon usually brings fresh blizzards that make the climbing route too treacherous.
Since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first conquered Everest on May 29, 1953, about 2,000 climbers have scaled the mountain. Another 205 people have died on its unpredictable slopes.