Two foreign mountaineers, stranded at 6,015 m altitude, rescued after 3 days

Gopeshwar: Two international mountaineers were successfully rescued Sunday morning after being stranded for three days at an altitude of 6,015 metres on Uttarakhand’s Chaukhamba III peak, officials at the District Disaster Management Centre in Chamoli confirmed.

The rescued climbers, identified as Michelle Theresa Dvorak from the United States and Fay Jane Manners from the United Kingdom, appeared tired but maintained their spirits, greeting rescuers with smiles upon their arrival at the Jyotirmath (Joshimath) helipad.

The mountaineers, part of an Indian Mountaineering Foundation expedition, found themselves in peril on October 3 when their bag containing crucial climbing gear and food supplies plunged into a gorge during their ascent toward the 6,995-metre Chaukhamba III peak.

A complex rescue operation involving multiple agencies was launched to reach the stranded climbers. The Indian Air Force (IAF) initiated aerial searches with two helicopters on Friday, while the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) joined the effort on Saturday, despite challenging weather conditions and fog hampering visibility.

The breakthrough in the rescue operation came with assistance from an unexpected source – a French mountaineering team conducting a separate expedition on the peak. The French climbers provided crucial coordinates of the stranded mountaineers’ location, enabling the rescue team to precisely locate and extract them.

“The coordinates shared by the French team proved invaluable in locating and transporting the stranded mountaineers to safety,” said Chamoli’s Additional Information Officer Ravindra Negi. He noted that the successful rescue was the result of a collaborative effort between the IAF, SDRF, and trained mountaineers from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, Uttarkashi.