Everest mercy dash by Canty climbers

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 9

Everest mercy dash by Canty climbers

MICHAEL RENTOUL

By

Two Canterbury mountaineers are on a mercy dash to the sole survivor of a Polish climbing expedition who is injured and stranded on Mount Everest.

Andrej Marciniak’s sixmember expedition was hit by a slab avalanche at 7200 m on Saturday. Battling snow blindness, broken ribs and shock, he managed to descend to a camp at 6200 m. His radio distress call was picked up at the Nepalese base camp, on the other side of the mountain.

Rob Hall and Gary Ball, who are due back in New Zealand after an unsuccessful attempt on Everest, diverted on Monday. They travelled 500 km from Katmandu to the Tibetan side of the mountain, and will now be racing against time to rescue the Pole.

Heavy snow and China’s refusal to allow a rescue mission using a Nepalese Army helicoper to fly

across the border meant an expedition could not leave from the Nepalese base camp.

The veteran climber, Reinhold Messner, was to have been in the faster but riskier air rescue bid, said a Christchurch mountaineer, Mr Colin Monteath, who was part of a 1984 Australian expedition on the northern side.

There had been no-one on that side able to mount a rescue as the Chinese had closed the area to expeditions, because of unrest in Tibet. Hall and Ball are accompanied by a Polish climber and two Sherpas.

Mr Mdnteath said the group would be able to drive as far as 5200 m up the mountain, leaving a 1000 m climb. That could take 24 hours, and would be arduous but probably not dangerous.

The men would be climbing “flat stick,” he said.

Having spent the last

two months on Everest, they would be acclimatised for the climb, he said.

Mr Monteath believed Hall and Ball had probably met the Poles, five of whom were killed by avalanche.

Mr Ball’s wife, Ms Ruth Carlile, of Twizel, said last evening she had been relieved when the New Zealand expedition got off the mountain, after their bid was called off because of adverse weather. Mr Ball had then telephoned from Katmandu on Monday to say he was on the rescue. “I asked him, ‘Why you?’ but he just said he had to go,” she said.

Ms Carlile said she knew the climbers could look after themselves, but she would be relieved when it was over.

The next contact with Hall and Ball may be five to seven days away, however they may have reached the climber already.