Rescue services airlifted Adrian Hayes from Camp 2 on Kangchenjunga yesterday evening, after he spent three days injured on the mountain. We spoke with him as he recovers in a hospital in Kathmandu.
“I will stay here for five or six days with some pretty sturdy frostbite. But after spending so long in the open at some 8,000m, you have to suffer the effects,” Hayes said.
Hayes had some trouble soon after starting down from the summit on May 10. He spent the next three days on the mountain, including the first night in the open above Camp 4.
Accident, no AMS
Hayes says he did not have acute mountain sickness (AMS), instead confirming what fellow climber Satish Gogineni told us yesterday: Hayes hurt his hand while rappelling down a vertical section.
“It was a stupid accident,” Hayes said in a voice message. “Luckily, I didn’t break my hand, as I first believed. However, it was heavily bruised, and climbing with one hand is possible, but descending takes a little bit longer. So a descent that should have taken a couple of hours ended up taking some 36 hours. This included a couple of nights under the stars, which is not exactly recommended at altitude, and [I was] sort of hallucinating.”
Hayes also posted a short message on Instagram, noting he climbed down mostly alone “without oxygen or water…before Jangbu Sherpa Pane found me around 7,800m and led me down, a man I probably owe my life to.”
Summit day
Meanwhile, Satish Gogineni is currently on his way to Lukla and texted ExplorersWeb to state that Hayes’ actions were instrumental to the success of the summit group on May 10.
“Around 3 am, Tendi Sherpa [one of the local climbers fixing the last meters of rope] got tired and there was a standstill of 15 to 20 minutes,” Gogineni said. “At that moment, Adrian [Hayes] came from behind and took the lead to open the route. I believe he gave the Sherpas a 90-minute to two-hour break.”
Gogineni also said that Hayes tried to help Margareta Morin, a client with Peak 15 Adventure, with her oxygen.
“Hayes noticed that her oxygen was at 0.5 and tried to increase it to 2 flow,” Gogineni said. Unfortunately, Morin, a 63-year-old climber from France on her first 8,000’er, died.
