Climbers rescued after three days of climbing in India

A British climber missing in the Himalayas has spoken of her relief after surviving two days in “brutal” conditions that put her life at risk.

Fay Manners, originally from Bedfordshire, and her climbing partner, Michelle Dvorak from the United States, became stranded on Mount Chaukhamba in northern India when the rope lifting their food, tent and climbing equipment broke. , leaving them without supplies.

The pair sent a distress message at an altitude of more than 20,000ft (6,096m), but initial search and rescue teams were unable to find them.

Ms Manners told the BBC the pair were “terrified” as they tried to descend the slope on their own before meeting rescuers.

Ms Manners is a mountaineer, a climber who specializes in difficult climbs and currently lives in Chamonix, France.

After a loose rock severed the rope used to pull the couple’s bag, Ms Manners said she felt “desperate”.

“I watched the bag fall down the mountain and I immediately knew what the consequences would be,” she said.

“We had no safety equipment left. No tents. No stove to melt snow for water. No warm clothes for the evening. Ice axes and crampons to retreat back to base.

“There are no flashlights to move around at night.”

The pair were able to send text messages to emergency services, prompting a search and rescue operation.

The women took shelter on a ledge as snow began to fall, sharing the only sleeping bags they had.

Mrs Manners said: “I felt hypothermic, constantly shivering and lacking food, my body was running out of energy to keep warm.”

The next morning, a helicopter arrived looking for the couple but could not locate them – meaning they faced another 24 hours on the mountain.

“They tried to rescue us, but the company’s operating conditions were very harsh,” she explains. The weather was bad, the fog, the altitude and they couldn’t find us because the face was so vast.”

After trying to climb down the mountain face to let the ice melt, the two women were able to get some water in their bottles.

Mrs Manners said they “barely survived” the storm that afternoon and spent a second night in the cold with no food and little water.

“The helicopter flew over again and didn’t see us anymore. We are destroyed,” she said.

“We knew we had to try and go down ourselves because the helicopter wouldn’t help us.”

On that second morning, they began to carefully climb down the ledge, aware that their weak condition could lead to mistakes.

At that moment, they spotted a group of French climbers heading towards them – rescuers had heard about their situation from mutual friends.

They shared equipment, food and sleeping bags with the women and contacted the helicopter for the exact location for the rescue.

Mrs Manners said: “I cried with relief knowing we could survive.

“They assisted us in traversing the steep glacier, which would not have been possible without crampons and ice axes.

“We could have frozen to death or tried to cross steep glaciers without the right equipment and fallen into danger.

“Or maybe, maybe the helicopter finally found us?”

In 2022, Ms Manners was the first woman to ascend the Phantom Direct route on the south face of the Grand Jorasses in Mont Blanc.

She has also successfully climbed peaks in Pakistan and Greenland in the past year.

Miss Manners does Describe her ambitions to inspire women to pursue their interest in mountaineering and pursue their love of mountaineering.

She said the wire breakage incident was “very unfortunate and very rare”.

“We did very well to survive and retreat the way we did,” Ms. Manning added.

She said she felt “exhausted, mentally depressed and so tired that I couldn’t sleep”.

Now, the couple said they plan to eat local Indian food before they can fly home to their loved ones.

A spokesman for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “We are supporting the family of a British woman reported missing in India who has been rescued safely. “