A French mountaineer rescued from Pakistan’s “Killer Mountain” has described how she was forced to abandon her weak climbing partner, descend alone in darkness and wait more than 24 hours for help while suffering altitude-induced hallucinations that made her take a shoe off in freezing conditions.

Elisabeth Revol, 37, returned to France after she was rescued on Sunday from Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth-highest peak at 8,126 metres. She is being treated in a hospital in the Haute-Savoie region, where doctors are assessing whether she will require amputations because of frostbite in her hands and left foot. In an interview with Agence France-Presse she recalled how rescuers urged her to leave her weak and bleeding fellow climber, the Polish mountaineer Tomek Mackiewicz, behind – something she had called “terrible and painful.” Rescuers were unable to reach Mackiewicz, a father of three, who had made six previous winter attempts to scale Nanga Parbat. There is almost no chance of him being found alive.(theguardian)…[+]