Two Alpinists Were Trapped at 6,400m in the Himalaya When Rockfall Severed Their Rope

When the sun rose on the morning of October 5, Fay Manners and Michelle Dvorak sat perched on a tiny rock ledge at 6,400 meters, high on the flanks of the 6,995-meter (22,949ft) Himalayan peak Chaukhamba III. The pair had been stranded on the ledge for 48 hours without a tent, food, or water. They were exhausted and freezing.

Two days prior, Dvorak and Manners had been attempting the first ascent of the Indian peak when falling rocks sliced a rope and sent their haul bag full of most of their survival goods and technical gear plummeting to the valley floor. The accident left them stranded without an inReach device, tent, stove and fuel, and most of their down apparel.

As the two rested, a search helicopter from the Indian Air Force appeared overhead—it circled the mountain several times, but flew off without spotting them. It was the second fly-by in as many days.

“We were shattered,” Manners told Outside. “At this point we haven’t eaten for two days. We’re severely dehydrated. We’re freezing. We’ve been on the wall seven days.”

Manners was near hypothermic. With the snowstorm worsening, she did not believe the two could survive another night on the precarious perch. She envisioned two options for survival: Stay on the ledge a third night and hope that the helicopters would find them, or descend the wall and then navigate a technical, crevasse-filled icefall with just one set of crampons and ice axes. Both choices came with deadly risks.

The Attempt of Chaukhamba III

Manners, 37, and Dvorak, 31, are among the upper echelon of women alpinists. Manners has established new routes from remote Pakistan to Greenland—the latter with Dvorak and late soloist Martin Feistl. Chaukhamba III, in the Garhwal Himalaya of India’s mountainous Uttarakhand state, was a fitting objective for the pair. High and remote, with a striking triangular southeast buttress that no one had ever attempted, the peak offered an enticing challenge.

The two left Delhi for the mountain on September 15. After establishing a base camp, they spent September 24 to 26 planning their approach across a steep, winding line through a labyrinth of crevasses to reach the peak’s southeast buttress. “Snow bridges broke on us, we were going down and up crevasses, having to ice climb with our axes and crampons—all before we even reached the col,” Manners said. “By the time we figured out how to get to our route, we felt like we’d done another route in itself.”

Manners and Dvorak left basecamp for good on September 27, reaching the buttress the following day. Over the next five days, they ascended the steep 600-meter granite face, finding many pitches of hard, consequential climbing up to 5.12a. The women made steady progress. The conditions was dry and warm, which allowed them to climb with bare hands, but also increased their exposure to rockfall at temperatures rose.

“We could only climb when it was warm,” Dvorak said. “As soon as the shade hit, our fingers were freezing, and it was impossible to climb.” After dawn-to-dusk days alternating between muddy scrambling on lower-angle sections and hard rock climbing on the steeper parts of the face, and long, near-sleepless nights cramped on small ledges, the pair was nearing the top of the buttress. Soon, they would connect with the peak’s south ridge, where lower angles guarded the summit.

At 1 p.m. on Thursday, October 3, Manners was in the lead, with Dvorak following behind. Both women carried a small amount of gear in backpacks, but the majority of their gear—included the inReach, tent, stove, fuel, portable power banks, one pair of crampons and ice axes, down pants and headlamp, and other essentials—were in a haul bag.

As Manners hauled the bag, the ropes became stuck. Dvorak, watching from below, climbed above the bag to try to free it. That’s when the cliff below her broke apart, slicing the rope holding their gear. “These rocks just came out from under me,” she said. “The next thing I knew, I looked down, and the bag was gone.”

The loss of the gear was catastrophic, and signaled an immediate end to their climb. At first, the women were simply disappointed that they wouldn’t be able to finish their route. But after a moment, they realized just how many of their essentials had been inside the haul bag. As if on command, dark clouds rolled in, and heavy snow began to fall. The warm weather that had accompanied them for the last five days was coming to an end. “The mood really changed,” Dvorak said. “We were just like, ‘Oh, shit. We are not safe on this mountain anymore.’”

Three Days of Snow and Wind

Though Manners’s inReach was lost with the bag, Dvorak had a similar device, a ZOLEO. Unlike a Garmin inReach, this device doesn’t have its own screen, and requires a paired smartphone to operate. Dvorak’s phone had just enough charge for her to fire off a single SOS, but her phone died just moments after the message was sent. Manners and Dvorak knew their message was in the ether and their location had been marked for rescuers, but they had no idea if any were coming. So the women waited.

They had enough rope and gear to descend from the buttress, but once they did, they’d still have to navigate the icy, steep, crevasse-filled descent off the col to their camp. Descending this section with just one pair of crampons was a high-risk option. “Given the incredibly complex, challenging approach, we knew it wasn’t possible,” Manners said. “Even if we get down off the rock, how the hell are we going to operate on that terrain without our gear?”

It made more sense to stay put and wait for a rescue. When rescue helicopters showed up late on that first day, it seemed like their decision to stay was correct. But then the helicopters flew overhead without stopping. This happened again the next day.

“That’s when we started to have lengthy conversations about what we should do, about how much we should risk,” Manners said.

The duo had no food or no water. Dvorak had her down parka and pants, but Manners’ cold weather gear had been in the haul bag. They were sharing what they could, but Manners was certain she wouldn’t survive another night on the ledge. “I was going to freeze,” she said.

On the third day, the women began rappelling down the buttress. They weren’t sure how they’d navigate the approach. They could split up, with one person taking the sleeping bag and attempting to survive while the other used the crampons to descend to basecamp. Or, they could each wear one crampon and attempt the descent together. Both options required strength and stamina, and the women were weakened by their stay on the ledge.

“We’d already waited two days up there. We were severely dehydrated, hungry, freezing,” Manners said. “Our bodies were weak, and even before we lost the haul bag the climbing had been pushing our limits.”

The decision ended up being moot. While rappelling down the buttress late on Saturday, Manners and Dvorak saw a four-person team of climbers on the glacier. “We realized we had to catch these guys,” Dvorak said. “This might be our only chance to get out of here.”

The four climbers were from the elite Groupe Militaire de Haute Montagne, of Chamonix. Due to the bad weather, they had abandoned their own attempt on the peak’s east pillar. That’s when they heard word of the missing Manners and Dvorak.

Dvorak and Manners rappelled as fast as they could down the buttress, but lost sight of the French team. After a few minutes the squad appeared directly below them, just a hundred or so feet above the glacier.

“It was a miracle,” Manners said. “Perfect timing. When we got to them, they’d been trying to get to us as well. We were worried that maybe they didn’t even know we were missing, and were just coming to try their route, so my heart was overfull when we figured out they were there for us.”

With gear and support from the French team, Manners and Dvorak were able to descend to the French advanced base camp at around 5,180 meters. They were airlifted out by helicopter the following day.

The two said they received a warm welcome from the Indian Mountaineering Federation (IMF), which organized the rescue. “There’s no, ‘Here’s a giant bill for the rescue, you owe us,’ mentality,” said Manners. “The message was, ‘We are so happy we could get to you, and we want you to come back and we want you to try this mountain again.”

A Media Whirlwind

News of the rescue spread around the globe. The women were helicoptered out on the morning of Sunday, October 6, and within 48 hours, coverage of their ordeal appeared on numerous outlets, from the BBC to Good Morning America. It was more publicity than either woman had received in their careers. But both told Outside they had mixed feelings about the attention.

“Certainly both Michelle and I feel we put in a grand effort here,” Manners said. “But this is a mountain we didn’t summit. The mountains we have summited, the successes we’ve had, they haven’t received nearly as much publicity.”

Manners said that the pair seek to inspire women to get into the mountains—a goal that could be jeopardized by the stories. “I don’t want this story to put people off from the sport,” she said.

Manners and Dvorak told Outside they’d continually replayed the ordeal, asking themselves if they could have done things differently. A steeper, cleaner route up the face may have reduced rockfall. Manners could have carried her Garmin in a pocket instead of in the haul bag.

But they admitted that it’s tough to nitpick. “It’s easy to say I would have picked a better route,” Manners said. “But we’re the first people that tried to make our way up this buttress. So it’s hard to say what a better route would have been.”

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