Two Climbers Were Stuck at 21,000 Feet in the Himalayas. Here’s How They Survived.

When the sun rose on the morning of October 5, climbers Fay Manners and Michelle Dvorak sat perched on a tiny rock ledge at 21,000 feet, high on the flanks of the 22,949-foot Himalayan peak Chaukhamba III. The pair had been stranded on the ledge for 48 hours without shelter, food, or water. A driving snowfall steadily buried them, and the two were exhausted and freezing.

Two days prior, Dvorak and Manners had been attempting a first ascent of the Indian peak when falling rocks sliced a rope and sent a bag full of their survival goods and technical gear plummeting to the valley floor. The accident left them stranded without critical items, such as a working communication device, tent, stove and fuel, and 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.

A Tricky Attempt at History

Manners, 37, and Dvorak, 31, are among the upper echelon of alpinists. Manners has established new routes from remote Pakistan to Greenland—the latter with Dvorak and late soloist Martin Feistl. In 2022, the duo made an ascent of Denali’s legendary Cassin Ridge, one of the most famous alpine routes in the world.

Chaukhamba III, in the Garhwal Himalaya of India’s mountainous Uttarakhand state, was a fitting objective for the pair. High and remote, with a gargantuan triangular southeast buttress that no one had ever attempted to climb, the peak offered an enticing challenge and the opportunity for a first ascent.

The two left Delhi for the remote 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 deadly crevasses to reach the peak’s southeast buttress. “Snowbridges 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 base camp for good on September 27, reaching the buttress the following day. Over the next five days, they ascended the sheer 2,000-foot granite face. It was hard, committing climbing, where a mistake would carry serious consequences. The women made steady progress. The conditions was dry and warm, which allowed them to climb with bare hands, but the balmy conditions carried a hidden danger. As temperatures rose around midday, snow and ice securing loose rocks on the buttress melted, causing blocks of rock and ice to tumble down. It was a risk they had to accept.

“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 2,000-foot buttress. Soon, they would connect with the peak’s south ridge, where lower angles guarded the 22,949-foot summit.

At 1 P.M. on Thursday, October 3, Manners was in the lead, with Dvorak following behind. They were traveling in a fashion typical of big wall rock climbing, carrying some equipment in small packs on their back, but using a pulley system to lift a haul bag with the majority of their gear behind them. This duffel contained Manners’ Garmin satellite messenger, as well as their tent, stove, fuel, portable power banks, one pair of crampons and ice axes, down pants and headlamp, and other essentials.

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 duffel. “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 summit push. 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’ Garmin 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’ warm 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 base camp. 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 we’d been climbing for six days, 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 French Group 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, and but lost sight of the French team. But 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 17,000 feet. 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 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.”

In some survival stories, teams break apart as the days wear on and the odds of living grow thin. Outside asked Manners and Dvorak if  they experienced this dynamic. They said the opposite situation occurred on the peak. “The further we got into our suffering, the stronger our relationship became,” Dvorak said.

As the snow fell and the frigid hours dragged on, the two relied on each other, both for morale and for survival, hunkering together to conserve body heat and share meager supplies. “We were in need of each other, more and more,” Manners said. “Those first six days climbing, we could afford to have little spats, about not coiling a rope correctly or whatever. But when it got serious, we were closer than ever.”