Given up for dead in the Himalayas, Japanese mountaineer comes back alive after 48-hour ordeal

Matsumoto (front) with Ito: endurance feat in the snows "I thought it was a ghost." When Hideki Tanimoto looked up from his frugal lunch at the base camp at the foot of Mount Kun, 80 km from Kargil in Jammu and Kashmir state, he saw a short figure lurching drunkenly towards the tent. As the exhausted man came near, Tanimoto saw to his astonishment and delighted surprise that it was none other than Masaki Matsumoto, whom Tanimoto and team-mate Shunji Ito had given up for dead in the snows of the summit.'The mountains are hard hosts' runs a prudent Swiss saying, but the peaks of the northern Himalayas were putting on their most pleasant face when Matsumoto, 32, led a party of three - Tanimoto, 30, Ito, 37, and Masahiro Mizutani, 25, - on an expedition to Mount Kun (7,770 m). Mizutani was left behind in Srinagar, struck down by what Ito calls the "Indian culture shock": a bad stomach. The three Japanese, along with liaison officer D.K. Sharma and Sherpa cook Sunder, established base camp at about 4,200 m. Subsequently, they set up camps 1 and 2, and the last one on a snow plateau 800 m below the peak.Alarm: The three set out on the last lap on August 27. Ominously, the wind, which had been a gentle breeze until now, was building up to near gale strength. Barely 50 metres from the peak, Matsumoto sank to a rock, complaining that he was tired and asked Tanimoto and Ito to carry on. The two attained the peak, stayed there for about half-an-hour, and started down. They met their leader again, now 20 metres from the top. "You go back to the camp," said Matsumoto, "I will climb to the peak and come back."He did not come back. Tanimoto and Ito waited and waited in camp three. When expectation had given way to alarm, the two left the camp for a search, shouting at the top of their voices, turning a telephoto lens into an impromptu telescope peering through the swirling masses of snow for some sight of their lost leader. The wait stretched out to two days, August 28 and 29, and Tanimoto and Ito had almost given up hope.Matsumoto, however, was very much alive, although, as he says now, "I wondered how long I would last in the harsh weather." He asserts that he had lost his bearings because the sun had been blotted out by the storm. For the already tired mountaineer it was now a question of survival: all he had on him was one packet of glucose biscuits, and a billy can of sweet soup. Conserving his energies, waiting for the storm to blow over and allow him a glimpse of the sun, Matsumoto spent two days in a cold, hostile world. Most of the time, he sheltered in a shallow crevasse.Rescue: Meanwhile, Tanimoto and Ito, after yelling themselves hoarse for two days, left for base camp on August 30. And it was on the same day that a very tired, famished and frostbitten Matsumoto stumbled into camp 3. Ironically, his colleagues had abandoned the camp only hours earlier. The storm had lifted and the sun was again warming the snows when on August 31, Matsumoto, by now on his last legs, made his stumbling way down the mountain to fall into his friends' arms.He was brought to Kargil in a helicopter from Gulmothango, a hamlet midway between base camp and Kargil - he rode on the back of Sunder until Gulmothango - and, after preliminary treatment, flew back to Delhi. The experience of a rescue is nothing new for Matsumoto - in 1979 he had been evacuated in the same manner after an accident on an expedition, and had lost all the toes of his right foot. The 48-hour ordeal in the high snows this year has quenched none of his enthusiasm, for, even as he lay on his hotel bed, he was planning another expedition to the Himalayas within a week. "I will go," he says firmly. "Storms, danger, getting lost, is all part of the game."Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 8, 2013 08:08 IST--- ENDS ---

Download App

Get 37% off on an annual Print +Digital subscription of India Today Magazine

Given up for dead in the Himalayas, Japanese mountaineer comes back alive after 48-hour ordeal

The 48-hour ordeal in the high snows this year has quenched none of his enthusiasm, for, even as he lay on his hotel bed, he was planning another expedition to the Himalayas within a week.

PUBLICATIONS

TELEVISION

EVENTS

RADIO

GAMING

USEFUL LINKS

PRINTING

WELFARE

DISTRIBUTION

SYNDICATIONS

WEBSITES

EDUCATION