The Deadliest Mountain Expedition in History

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By CoAg
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Writers and researchers: Jay Adams
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lenin Peak.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
At seven one hundred thirty four meters or twenty three thousand,
four hundred and six feet tall, it is the most
climb mountain on Earth that is over seven kilometers tall,
and it's easy to see why just by looking at it.
It looks a fair bit wider than it is tall,
giving it a much gmler slope and making it a
much less technical climb than most mountains of its size.
It's even developed a reputation for being a relatively safe mountain,

(00:25):
but that's not quite the whole story. In a cruel
twist of irony, despite this reputation, it's also the site
of some of the most harrying expeditions to have ever occurred,
including the single deadliest mountain expedition in recorded history. These
are those instants, and as always, view discretion is advised.

(00:53):
Lenin Peak is located in the Translay Range to Jikistan,
along the border with Kyrgyzstan, only fifty three klometers from
the very westernmost.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Point of China.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Before nineteen twenty eight, it was known as Mount Kaufman,
and since two thousand and six it has since been
renamed once again to Ibna Sina. At least that's what
it's called Tajikistan because Kyrgyzstan disagrees on its name. Simultaneously,
tribes of the Ara know the mountain by a different name.
So for a simplicity, we're gonna use the most commonly
known name Lenin Peak. But one other thing the mountain

(01:22):
was commonly known as was safe, and in fact there's
something to this because Lenin Peak is the most climb
mountain in the world that is over seven kilometers tall
at seven thirty four meters or twenty three thousand, four
hundred and six feet. The reason why is actually pretty
apparent just from looking at it. The mountain isn't that
steep in many places, and it looks a fair bit
wider than it is tall from some angles. This makes

(01:45):
it seem like it merges into the neighboring mountains seamlessly,
almost like one long ridge, and this makes for another
interesting feature. The mountain's wide stance means for more possible
ways to attack the mountain. So while many mountains can
have as few as one common climbing root or maybe
three to five is an average, Lenin Peak has sixteen
available roots. Some of these are simple enough that even

(02:06):
beginner climbers were able to accomplish them with some preparation.
This has led to the mountain's safe reputation while also
still having more difficult options for those who choose them.
Lenin Peak was also once believed to be the highest
peak in the Soviet Union, giving it a prestigious reputation
on many climber's bucket lists. In addition, in the early days,
it was popular primarily among Soviet climbers because of how

(02:27):
difficult it was to travel outside the country. It would
remain this way for decades, and in that time many
of the camps still used today were established along the
most popular routes the very last stretch of the Soviet Union.
So the early nineties was a tumultuous period, to put
it lightly. Only a few years earlier, the Chernobyl disaster
had shaken the Union, and the cracks from the economic

(02:47):
and political pressures were starting to show simultaneously on the
world stage. It was more important than ever to project
an image of stability, and on top of that, climbing
clubs and now the regular people still cared on with
their own plans. Any things going on was a Soviet
climbing team preparing for an expedition to Mount Everest. Several
dozen members were at Lenin Peak from multiple different climbing clubs,

(03:08):
as well as some from outside the Union. They all
planted climate over the coming few days, and the best
among them would be selected for the expedition. Lenin Peak
gave them a chance to work out any bugs and
for the more experienced members of the team to watch
the others in action. In fact, one of the most
experienced members there was Vladimir bally Burden, who was the
very first Soviet climber to ever reach the summit of

(03:28):
Everest NK two. This made him about the most qualified
judge you could find for such a team. Besides the personnel,
the mountain itself was also very well suited. Even though
Lenin Peak is shorter than Everest, the classic root up
the mountain's north face is superficially similar to Everest's. It
begins with a gradual climb up to the glacier at
the base, followed by an S shaped midsection with multiple camps,

(03:50):
and then approaching the summit along a ridgeline like a
miniature Everest. The mountain is also high enough to require
auction tanks and time spent acclimatizing to the altitude. This
means a lot of the preparation is specific, but also
the chances of something going fatally wrong are much lower.
The teams began their climb in the early days of
July nineteen ninety, with Lendin Peak commonly quite pleasant during

(04:11):
the summer. Being as far inland as it is, the
mountain isn't known for large amounts precipitation, and even though
it has large swaths of perma frost and glacial ice,
the thinner atmosphere and reflection of sunlight off the snow
minute not uncommon that winter clothes were not needed on
Winfrey days. In fact, you were often more likely to
get a sunburn on the slopes of Lenin Peak than
frostbite during the summer, even though you might have dozens

(04:33):
of feet of ice beneath you. One of the climbers
in the group, Alexi, had even previously some of the
mountain wearing just a T shirt and pants. The first
major camp up the mount itself was known as the
frying Pan. This was a large flat era between the
mountain's main body and one of its shoulders, at about
fifty three hundred meters or seventeen thy four hundred feet up.
This is also a bit less than halfway to the

(04:53):
top from base camp at forty two hundred meters or
thirteen thy eight hundred feet. It was well lit during
the day and it made for perfect campground because the
error was known to be quite stable as well, with
the last avalanche being a full of thirty years prior.
It was also tucked a little to the side of
the main northern face, and that meant most avalanches passed
it by entirely, so year after year served as one

(05:14):
of the most popular camps in the entire mountain and
was part of at least two main routes. On the
thirteenth of July that year, though the weather wasn't nearly
as cooperative as most summers, an unseasonable snowstorm blankeded the
mountain in the first day, coming down hard across the
entire northern face, and delayed the climb until it passed.
Once things seemed to settle down, close to fifty members

(05:34):
of the Varius groups set out for the frying Pan
and would reach it and begin to set up camp
at the same time that really experienced climber, Vladimir just
had a bad feeling about things, so once he reached
the frying pan, he decided to head back down to
base camp and assess the mountain again the next day.
He would almost do this alone until one of his friends, Boris,
realized he didn't have enough auction to continue, either due
to a leak or an earlier calculation error. Boris's girlfriend, Elena,

(05:58):
also decided to return with them, but shortly into the
journey fell sick, possibly as a result of not being
acclimatized yet, so she would end up deciding to stay
at camp and come down to meet them later if
things didn't improve. Up above, a total of forty five
people at dinner, tended to their equipment and mingled as
they waited out the last hours of the day and
went to bed. The following day, they would continue up
to the second and third camps, and maybe even Summon

(06:20):
on the same date, depending on how things went. Then,
just before six fifty pm, hundreds of kilometers away in
the Hindu Kush region, a magnitude of six point four
earthquake struck over two hundred klometers beneath the Earth's surface.
The climbers felt nothing high up on London Peak, and
those below for hundreds of kilometers. It may have only
noticed a slight rumbling, but what did feel it was

(06:42):
the glacier. One of the siraqs, which is a large
vertical chunk of ice along the mountain's face, then broke
off and fell into the massive volume of freshly fallen snow,
which was already overloading the mountain's face. In a matter
of seconds, a single multi hundred ton chunk of ice
had started a multi thing one thousand ton avalanche around
one and a half kilometers wide. Hardly anyone in the

(07:05):
camp even had time to get out their sleeping bags,
never mind their tents, before the wave hit them and
rolled over the frying pan. In only a few seconds.
The entire camp was gone moments later, once the chaos
ended and the snow settled, Although they didn't know it
at the time. Out of the forty five climbers there
only two escaped. Alexi and a man named a Miro

(07:25):
had been camping near the edge of the frying pan,
closest to the slope, so rather than the snow rolling
over top of them and bearing their tents, it pushed
them off the edge and set them tumbling down as
much as eight hundred meters over twenty five hundred feet
before dropping them both off a twenty five meter or
eighty foot cliff into a mount of snow. Once at
the bottom, Alexei lurched and stumbled out of the snow, bruised,
cut and wearing little more than socks and a torn

(07:46):
set of pants. He had been getting ready for bed
when the wall of snow hit him and threw him
out of his own tent. It took a moment to
even realize what has happened, but then he saw a
mural half sticking out of the snow.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
And heard over to help them out.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Nearby, they also on the legs of another climber who
had been killed by the fault, but they were bared
too deep in the snow to be pulled out. Now,
the two of them, practically naked, stranded on the side
of the mountain and freezing to death, had to find
a way to survive. They realized that if they tried
to go back down the mountain they would freeze on
the way, so instead they climbed back up and search
for their old campsite. For all they knew, only a

(08:19):
part of the camp had been hit and they may
even find shelter there still. When they finally made it
back to camp, though, what they found was both a
nightmare and salvation. They couldn't see any other people at
the camp, but they could hear some. A few were
still wrapped in their sleeping bags, but now pinned by
the way to the snow, and while the bags may
have insulated them and kept them alive slightly longer, they
would run out of air over the coming hours. For

(08:42):
Alexian Mirro, as horrible as it was, the others were
simply too deep to dig out and impossible to find.
Both men were also still at risk of freezing to death,
so it's not like they were in a position to
mount to rescue. Fortunately, while the heavier objects like people,
auction tanks and cooking stoves had some to the bottom
of the snow, loose articles of clothing and the torn
fabric of tents had ended up on the surface. Alexian

(09:03):
Mural then wrapped themselves in whatever they could find to
survive the night and huddle together for warmth, hoping that
nothing else happened. Down at the base of the mountain.
Vladimir was one of the first to notice something was wrong,
and began calling others to join them and rescue before
the avalanche had even fully settled, But even so, it
would take hours to reach the frying pan through the
newly churned, unstable snow. Back up at the frying pan

(09:24):
the next morning, Alexian Mirror woke up to the blinding
white cold, still alone on the face of the mountain.
It was obviously going to take rescuers time to reach them,
so the two had no choice but to start down together,
and as if things couldn't get worse, they even had
difficulties seen the ground in front of them because a
dense fog had rolled in. They actually took to occasionally
throwing snowballs ahead of themselves to mark the path and

(09:44):
listened to what they hit. They also walked barefoot through
the snow, or possibly with clothing wrapped around their feet,
and it was only the intermittent sun that somehow prevented frostbite.
They were also both injured, with a broken arm and
a broken leg between them. Suffice it to say, the
climb was beyond grueling, and by seven pm, Mirr wasn't
able to continue, even with Alexi urging him on, so

(10:05):
Alexi offered to go find help and carry it on
down the mountain side after giving mir the warmest clothes
they had. Alexi has since said that an iron determination
not to die and to have a glass of lemonade
is what kept him going, and it finally paid off.
Vladimir and the others had found their earlier tracks from
when they'd climbed back up to the camp and knew
there were survivors in the mountain, and they finally found Alexi.

(10:25):
They then gave him warm clothing and brought him down
the mountains the base camp after he told them where
to find Mural. Helicopters soon arrived on the mountain, along
with dozens of early rescuers trying to dig the survivors
of the frying pan, but it was already too late.
The weather had been too cold, and overnight it hardened
the loose powder of the avalanche into a single mass
of ice that made digging ten times more difficult, But
by then it was likely that any survivors who had

(10:47):
been buried had long passed away. Anyway, Mirror was recovered
a few hours later before the end of the day.
He and Alexi would be both the first and the
last survivors found on the face of the mountain and
were taken to the hospital in the city of ash
After them, only four bodies would be recovered at the campsite,
including the one Alexei and mir had landed here, with
the rest scattered and buried so widely and so deeply

(11:08):
that efforts to even locate them were practically impossible.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
It would take until two thousand and.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Eight, when the glacier began to mount, for more remains
to be recovered. An expedition was mounted by Peter Chedrin,
who was the son of one of the lost climbers
of the expedition, and along with them Alexi returned to
the thrying pan for the first time since the disaster,
as a guide and hopefully as a kind of closure.
While there, he even managed to recover some of the
climbing pitons he'd used and a pair of ice axes
they'd left on the mountain. Alexei would also go on

(11:36):
to make several trips in two thousand and eight, two
thousand nine, twenty ten, and eleven, and continued attempts to
recover the bodies of his friends and colleagues with the
same determination that saved him in the first place. And
many of them were brought back down the mountain mummified
or as bones and buried around a memorial stone at
the base of the mountain. Most of them, however, are
still upon the slopes. Among them are twenty three members

(11:57):
of the Leningrad Mountaineering Club, including Elena, as well as
six members from former Czechoslovakia for Israelis, two Swiss mountaineers
and one Spaniard. But even among those recovered, most the
bodies have not been identified. So it's with a sense
of irony that a mountain considered to be safe should
be the site of climbing's single large stathyl. But it
also served to remind that there is no such thing

(12:18):
as truly safe. No matter what, a mountain is still
a mountain, and just calling a mountain safe might have
contributed to many of those who chose to climb there,
increasing its popularity and the chance of something going wrong.
Put more cars through an intersection, or boats between a
pair of islands, or more people along a certain stretch
of sidewalk, and you're going to have more accidents no
matter what you do.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
And so, as you might imagine, this.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Was not the first disaster in London peak, and it
certainly wouldn't be the last. The very first documented climb
of the mountain killed eleven people in nineteen fifty five,
and we have no idea how many local villagers or
people who traveled through the mountain range died in ancient history.
It's probably not many, but zero would be even more unlikely.
As long as the mountain is there, someone will climb it,

(13:00):
and that continues to this day. One of the most
recent disasters was in twenty twenty two, but this one
is different. In August of twenty twenty two, Ilias said
goodbye to his family in Moscow and made his way
to London Peak. Landing in the city of ash he
met one of his friends, Zora, another accomplished climber, but
once they arrived, plans changed. Their intended mountain guide had

(13:20):
fallen ill, but they had already spent the money on
the plane tickets and they were there, so they figured
they might as well go anyway. The two of them
then decided to head up to Camp one from base
camp and see if they could find a guide. Were
another group to join with, and of all the people
they could find, they found Vechislav Shako. He was known
as a bit of a weirdo in an affectionate way.
He was known for climbing the mountain in shorts and
flip flops and carrying loads as heavy as he was

(13:42):
to the top before coming down on skis still carrying
the full load. He was definitely a bit of a madman,
but also one of the few people who knew the
mountains so well he could actually climb it during whiteout conditions.
Shiko was also well known for being quiet and friendly,
so he was all too happy to assist them. The
two men spent some time practicing small climbs up to
four thousand meters to acclimatize, and after six days of

(14:03):
bad weather, on the twenty seventh of August, Vecchislav woke
the two of them up to clear skies. It was
finally time, and the three of them began their way
up almost immediately, though during the ascent from Camp two
up towards the frying pan, Ilia slipped on a rock
and dislocated his knee. He was able to get it
back into place, and since the climb had only just begun,
he decided to try to continue. Unfortunately, though he very

(14:25):
quickly ran through the entire set of painkillers he had
with him. Then, when the group came to the next challenge,
which was an ice cliff halfway between the camps at
the base of a glacier, he knew he couldn't do it.
To climb this segment required a pre placed rope and
it was a single file system. If he made it
part way up and discovered he couldn't do it, it
would be impossible for anyone else to safely pass him,
and much more difficult for them to help him down.

(14:47):
So as much as Ilia wanted to join them on
the climb, he wasn't about to put them in danger.
With reluctance, he turned back to camp two and vowed
to rest up and see if he could meet up
with them later. Zora and Vechislav then made their way
up to the na X camp in good spirits, recording
video along the way, and Ilia went back down waiting
for them to get in touch. But then the next
day he heard nothing, and worrying about the weather, he

(15:08):
continued back down to base camp. There on the second day,
Ilia asked if anyone had heard from Zora and Vechislav,
only to be told they were gone. This didn't make sense.
What could have happened in such a short period of time.
Ilia would later learn that Zora and Vechislav had made
their whip to the frying Pan, then further to Camp
four on the Classic group. When the weather turned as

(15:28):
they arrived. They were soaked and cold and quickly huddled
into their tent to avoid hypothermia, when tragically they made
a simple mistake setting up a small burner to make
some tea. The two men unzipped the tents inner and
outer layers to let the air circulate, but the fresh
snowfallen wind was secretly working against them all while they
waited for the water to boil, the snow had grown
high enough to block airflow into the tent, slowly building

(15:50):
up levels of toxic carbon monoxide. This is why you're
never supposed to run a burner inside of tent, but
with stormy weather blowing outside, it was the only real
way they could have even tried, and it's not uncommon
for Clemish to do so, even though the rules.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Say you shouldn't.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
The effects afterward come on slow, delling the mind and
impairing judgment. Before lulling the victims to sleep with the
bright sunlight peaking through the thin layers of white snow.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
They never even noticed the tent flap was plugged.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
The two men weren't found until many hours later, after
the burner had totally run out of fuel. A year later,
Illio had published a documentary in their honor, showing how
incredible their friendship was in such a short period. It's
because of him and other people who have transmitted the
incident that we even know about the case. It's one
of hundreds each year around the world that are too
small to make international headlines. There's no great avalanche, no

(16:38):
dramatic radio calls, just two men.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Making an honest mistake.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
But despite this tragedy just a few years ago and
the larger death toll of the nineteen ninety avalanche, maybe
the most harrowing disaster in Lenin Peak came sixteen years earlier.
In nineteen seventy four, Lenin Peak was well into its
popularity as a tourist destination, and despite being within the
borders of the Soviet Republic, the July of that year
saw Americans, Japanese, French, Scottish and many other nations all camping, climbing,

(17:05):
and sharing in the sport and struggle. In fact, there
were over two hundred and thirty klombers assembled in a
base camp from over a dozen countries. This wasn't just
a normal month in the mountain, though it was the
largest international climbing event Lenin Peak had ever hosted. To
try and foster friendly international relations. There was still likely
some degree of healthy rivalry between the groups, but the
true challenge was always the mountain itself, so in the

(17:27):
spirit of this common struggle, most of the groups are
quick to help one another and make friends. One of
the Russian teams climbing in the mountain, though, stood out.
It was led by Elvira Sharayeva, who is one of
the most accomplished climbers in the USSR and by extension,
one of the most famous on Earth. At the age
of thirty six, she held the title Master of Sport,
which was an award given to national champions in the Union.

(17:49):
It was also reevaluated every four years within the Olympic cycle,
so to have the title you had to actively keep
earning it or it would be taken from you, and
she made a compelling case. Two years prior she had
led an all woman climb up the third highest mountain
in the same range, and the year before, in nineteen
seventy three, she led another expedition to Folly Traverse Ushba,
one of the most striking mountains in all of de

(18:10):
Caucasus Range in Georgia. That year, though in nineteen seventy
four it was time for her to finally tackle Lenin
Peak with another all female team. Elvira was actually known
widely enough that not only had many of the American
climbers already heard of her, but some of them looked
up to her as an inspiration. And to reiterate this
is in nineteen seventy four, the middle of the Cold War,
her being an idol in the eyes of some American

(18:32):
climbers was a huge deal. One of these admirers, Molly,
had arrived some days earlier and was helping port supplies
up the mountain to Camp two, known as the Cross Camp.
As they were doing this, the group heard the rumblings
of an avalanche above and watched helplessly as a massive
wall of powdered ice washed down the side of the mountain. Thankfully,
only a portion of it struck the second camp, scattering

(18:53):
gear and bearing one of their team. While others took
shelter in the cross the camp was known for, but
the group then also watched the wave roll down towards
Camp one, where four of the members had recently returned
to get another little supplies. Molly and the rest of
her group heard down the mountain side, which still took
hours before finding that, thankfully, no one was killed in
the instant. One in me lower group, Allen had been

(19:13):
buried up to his neck, with some minor injuries dealt
here there, but overall everyone was all right. At the
same time, though, although the teams were still determined to
continue the climb, everyone involved was a little shaken. For
about an hour after the avalanche, both groups believed the
others might have died, so they all ended up deciding
to head back down to base camp as soon as
they felt able. When they arrived, Molly came face to

(19:34):
face with one of the reasons she'd want to come.
She later described her as a strong, bossy blonde woman
ordering around four large Russian men. The blonde woman pointed
to a limp and climber they had with them. This
climber had sprained his leg after leaping into a ravage
for shelter The blonde woman then ordered people to collect
his pack and assist him, before turning to Molly and saying,
very matter of factly, quote, I'm Elvi or Charayeva. I'm

(19:57):
a master of spoor.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
What are you?

Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yet? Despite the very blunt introduction, Molly was starstruck. She
described Elvira as everything she wished she could be well respected,
taking charge and giving orders that others followed without questioning
who she was to give them. By contrast, Molly was
to say twenty four year old local climbing instructor from
Colorado who had lived out of her car. Obviously, she
was still good enough to be selected for the expedition,

(20:21):
but the comparison still stood out. All of this is
to say that Elvira was a force to be reckoned with.
Her plan was to not only be the first all
women team to climb the mountain, but to be the
first effort to go all the way up one route
and then down the other side, which would be a
full traversal of the mountain. The idea itself wasn't impossible,
Lenin Peak isn't very technically challenging, but a full traverse
would have the team spend an extended period of time

(20:43):
at high altitudes, and it also means they'd have to
bring all their camping year with them to the top,
since they wouldn't be coming down the same way. Some
people thought the idea was ambitious and a bit risky,
but recalled a certain energy in Alvira and her team.
Even though their tents had buttons instead of zippers and
their equipment is old, they had a strong sense of
self determination and seemed to believe they would do it.

(21:04):
Possibly the one who believed for most, though, was Vladimir
Elvira's thirty seven year old husband, another master of sport
and a trainer of the Soviet Mountaineering Federation in Moscow.
He was one of sixty Soviet climbers in the camp,
and over the coming weeks he and the others all
prepared for the climb, with the Soviet and Western base
camp separated only by a small stream. During this time,
trial runs, equipment tests, acclimatization, and physical training filled much

(21:27):
of the month until the August attempts began to grow
near All the while, the mountain loomed collecting fresh snowfall
in the unfavorable weather, and more modern avalanches came down
with regular earthquakes in the region. In fact, one of them,
not even a single day after Molly and her group
made it back down, hit two Americans scudding a path,
then another swept in and beard two others that came
to their rescue minutes later. Sadly, one of the climbers

(21:50):
in the first group was seriously injured in the first avalanche.
The other three men tried to assust to him, but
they were unable to save him, and even though the
other three men were unscathed by the avalanche, they were stranded.
It was only thanks to a Soviet helicopter pilot and
an American climber that supplies could be dropped by air,
allowing them to survive two days on the face of
the mountain. Then elsewhere, a group of five climbers unrelated

(22:12):
to the massive international groups suffered their own tragedy, with
three dying in a different avalanche. And yet despite these incidents,
the bureaucratic weight of the large organized event continued. So
much effort had been spent setting up to climb that
canceling it was more difficult than it should have been,
or at the very least, groups are hopeful that their
fortunes would be a little bit different than the others.
On the thirtieth of July, Elvier and her team were

(22:34):
finished with their trials and formally set off for Camp one.
They took something known as the Lipkin route, which was
slightly less common than the classic route through the frying
Pan on the western side of the mountain's north side,
but it would allow them to meet many of the
climbers from that more popular side on the way down.
Like they intended with a traversal. The climbing went well
for several days, and on the third of August the
group spent the whole day at Camp three. From there

(22:56):
it was only a long but gentle ridge up to
the top of the mountain, technically not much work, worse
than a regular hike, but still at a very high
altitude and quite a long distance, just over three kilometers
through thigh deep snow and ice. The following day, on
the fourth of August, a weather report came in of
yet another approaching storm, and already an American team, including
Allen The same Allan, who had already gotten stuck up

(23:16):
to his neck, was between Camps two and three and
reported white out conditions at fifty eight hundred meters or
nineteen thousand feet the few days of relatively clear weather
that Alvere and her team had taken to ascend it
or about to close, but rather than turn back, they
kept pushing up the mountain.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
On that day, they were.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Seen about one hundred and twenty meters or four hundred
feet below the summit by a Scottish clamber on his own.
The Scotsman had just been to the summit and traded
greetings with the group on his way back down. It
wasn't until the next day, on the fifth, that the
true severity of the storm became apparent. Vitally Ablakhov, the
base camp director, recommended by radio that all teams were
turned to base camp due to how serious incoming storm was.

(23:55):
And this was the man who was known as the
father or Soviet mountaineering, so he wasn't just some middle manager.
He was another master of sport and a sixty eight
year old mechanical engineer with more climbing experience than most
people in the mountain had years live up on the mountain. However,
Allan and his team of Americans just below Alvira's group
that Camp four had no.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Idea about any of this.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Their radios had been confiscated by customs when they entered Kyrgystanders,
so they were reduced to using a back up radio
that one of the Soviet climbing groups had loaned them,
and unfortunately it was unreliable along ranges and in severe weather. Additionally,
all the countries involved in the climb operated on their
own frequencies, so this drastically slowed the spread.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Of useful information.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Alan and his team simply never received the message, and
neither did an independent Japanese climbing team or the scotsmen,
all on the same Lipkin route as Elvira's team. But
radio or not, they were all about to find out anyway.
The Russian all women team weren't the only ones, but
the idea to try to beat the storm either. After
waiting so long, several teams had become impatient and saw
the gap in the weather as their chance. A Swiss team,

(24:56):
which was another all women team like Alvira's, who also
wanted to be the first all women team to Summit,
set off in spite of other people at the camp
urged them not to climb. Before the group could reach
the wide plateau of the summit, though The storm rolled
and hard to run noon on the fifth and blotted
out the midday sun. One member of the team suddenly
found herself climbing through white out conditions, nearly.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Lost in the void.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Miraculously, another American climber happened upon her after giving up
his own attempt, and helped got her back down the mountain.
On the way down, the two encountered the rest of
her team and one other Bavarian woman who traveled with them.
The American then urged them to give up the climb,
but not all listened. A twenty three year old photographer.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Named Ava refused to give up.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
A few hours later elsewhere on the mountain, at five pm,
Elvier's team reported by radio from the summit they'd actually
managed to do it. They were the first ever all
female team to reach the peak, but unfortunately any celebration
was short lived. Unbeknownst them, the Swiss team was now
lost in the blizzard less than a kilometer from them.
The weather had turned far worse than Elvier had hoped,

(25:57):
and the eight women at the summit were now in
full wet conditions with no shelter from the freezing wind,
heavy snow, also began falling over the mountain. In fact,
conditions had worsened so much since Elvira's team began their
clim that they could no longer see their path back down.
Even worse, the pathway to descend was a thin pointed
ridge line in either direction. Descending in high winds with

(26:18):
next no visibility was essentially a death sentence. This meant,
for all intents and purposes, they were trapped on the summit,
so realizing this was the case, they did their best
to pitch tents and wait out the storm. The following
morning of the sixth of August, though, was even worse.
One hundred and thirty kilometer or eighty mile per hour
winds screamed over the mountain, and a whole thirty centimeters

(26:38):
or a foot of snow buried any trails or equipment
that hadn't blown away on the first Not alone, they
lost a number of tents, as did Allen's party farther down,
with one of the tense metal frames even snapping in
half because the winds. By five pm on the same day,
Alvira reported that one of her team members was sick,
throwing up everything she tried to eat, and another seemed
to be developing similar symptoms Vitalia than Radio Delvira to

(27:01):
abandon the peak and find snow deep enough they could
dig a cave in. He knew without full protection from
the wind, it wouldn't be long before they were overwhelmed.
He apparently even told them explicitly that if the sick
party member could not be moved, they were to leave
her behind. The storm wasn't gonna lie up anytime soon,
and they were not the only group stranded, with several
others currently missing or out of contact. As the group

(27:24):
broke camp and made their way down, one of the
women was given a safety rope to hold on for
the others, said if they feul, someone would anchor them.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
As she sat down and.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Braced herself to hold the rope, though she never stood
up again and was the first to freeze to death.
On the side of the mountain and already suffering from
the previous night, the women only made it a few
hundred feet down the mountain before it became clear they
couldn't go any further. The snow was also still hard,
and the layers undneath were brittle and granular and impossible
to dig a cave inside. So without hope of finding

(27:52):
better shelter, the group once again made camp, losing even
more of their limited equipment in the process.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Vitali urged them over the radio to keep.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Knowing that it wouldn't be enough, and Alvia responded that
she would try, but later that day the two sick
women passed away. Then, to make things even worse, sometime
in the evening, hurricane force winds slammed into the mountain
peak and ripped away nearly everything else they had.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
The tent poles broke.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Whole, packs of supplies became airborne and flew off the mountain,
and anything that wasn't directly held in their hands was gone.
The five surviving women were reduced to three sleeping MiGs
and a single canvas tent with no poles, flapping helplessly
in some of the coldest harshest weather any of them
had ever seen. The next morning, the Japanese group on
the same route overheard with the Russian transmissions and inferred

(28:36):
that something was wrong at the summit, but not exactly
what was happening. Two of the four of them then
tried to ascend to help, but the wind was still
so strong that they could barely walk, never mind see,
and they were forced back into their camp at sixty five.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Hundred meters by eight am that mornings.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
Now on the seventh, Alvivra reported that three of the
five remaining members were also sick, with only her and
the other able bodied member refusing to abandon them. They
didn't know it at the time, but the storm they
were in had turned out to be the worst storm
to hit Lenin Peak in twenty five years.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Elsewhere, the photographer.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Ava of the Swiss team was also dead, just on
the other side of the summit, having never seen it
with her own eyes despite being so close, and dozens
of more people were trying and failing to make their
whip to assist. By noon, Alvira reported that two more
had died, one of them, apparently with her last words,
asked when she would see flowers again, and another asked
about her children. A few hours later, at three thirty

(29:28):
in the afternoon, Elvira's voice was noticeably disoriented over the radio,
and she apologized for failing everyone. Vitally pleaded with her
to hold on and promised to rescue was coming, but
it was still just impossible to do so. At five pm,
windspeeds had reached one hundred and sixty kilometers or one
hundred miles per hour and negative forty degrees. One more
woman is thought to have died by then, and shortly after,

(29:50):
around six thirty PM, Elvira said she would soon be
too weak to press the transmit button. The final message
received on the radio was quote I'm alone now, which
just a few minutes left. See you in eternity end quote.
Twice more afterwards, someone pressed the button in the coming hours,
trying to transmit, but it seems they were too.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Weak to say anything.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
On the eighth of August, as the weather cleared, Alan
and the American team finally came out of hiding in
their tents and eagerly made their way up towards the summit,
thinking they might finally have their chance. He then recognized
Elvira's coat in the distance as he approached, and at
first thought she might have been taking a nap in
the sun or even making snow angels, but as he
called out, she didn't move. Only when his team came

(30:31):
closer did they noticed the trail of bodies, an entire
team of people he'd only days before post for photographs
with practiced alongside and got to.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Know all they did before them.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
The Japanese team on the mountain arrived at nearly the
same time and gave their more powerful radio to the Americans,
who reported what they found. But down at base camp
it was just confirmation of the inevitable. It seemed in
the aftermath that Elvier tried to crawl down the mountain
on her own. At the very end above her, four
more were so tightly packed with the tent that the
fourth was only found a week later when a recovery

(31:02):
team could pry them apart. Then beyond that, the others
also made a dotted line leading back to the summit,
where the first loss still held the safety rope for
her friends in an eternal, hopeless gesture.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
All in all, thirteen people died during the period.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Of the expedition, for a wide variety of reasons, both
due to mismanagement as well as personal choices. Many of
the climbers involved have spoken about the days leading up
and about how the extra push to represent their nations
led to choices they otherwise wouldn't have made. Like for example,
it's thought that Elvira's draft to prove her worth likely
had them take a rest in the mountain to distance
themselves from another group of male Russian clamors, and then

(31:38):
later to make the fateful choice to push ahead of
the weather. The ultimate irony here is that she didn't
really need to prove anything. Elvira had already summoned multiple
mountains with women only teams. She'd already led dozens of expeditions.
She was also a master of sport in the Union.
Anyone who wasn't already convinced of her skill and that
of her team wasn't going to have their mind changed
by adding one more mount to the list. Or maybe

(32:00):
it wasn't even necessary about proving their worth as an
all female team. Often, being truly great at something requires
a person to have some level of ego, that drive
to push themselves and always do more than they already have.
Or maybe it was none of this. It's easy to
speculate in the aftermath of these instants that people reckless
or misguided. Maybe these were the same simple, weighted decisions

(32:20):
we make on a daily basis, but they simply got
made in a situation where the margins were thin and
the stakes were life and death. A week after the disaster,
Elvira's husband, Vladimir, led a team to collect the bodies
and bury them in two communal grapes. He documented everything
about the scene for investigation, and the next year petitioned
the government for permission to recover the bodies. This is
something which for safety reasons is seldom done, but after

(32:43):
the families of the climbers and public at large in
the Soviet Union both widely supported the mission, Vladimir was
granted special permission to do so. He would then lead
a team up into the mountains, including two female clambers
inspired by his wife, in nineteen seventy five, who recovered
all eight bodies. They were then reburied down at the
bays the mountain, next to a monument