After another sleepless night Mattias and Olof hear some sounds outside the tent early in the morning. When they check they see this disoriented man standing outside their tent. Exhausted and with severe frostbite in his hands and face he is talking in an unfamiliar language. After a while he says in broken English: "I've climbed 7000 meters and then I got lost...". We work out that he belongs to a Latvian expedition and that he got lost on the mountain after summiting the previous afternoon and that he has spent the whole night exposed to the bad weather without any cover. We guessed he came down from the summit via the Gran Acarreo, a massive stone field completely exposed to the wind and offers no cover. Many climbers have spent their last night alive in that field after a critical navigation error on their way down. He was really lucky to be alive. We try to get him into our tent and into a sleeping bag to warm himself but he blindly refuses and says he wants to continue down to Plaza de Mulas. We give him a bottle of warm water to drink and to warm up his hands with.

After he drunk all the water, Olof led him to the park rangers stationed at Nido de Condores. Erik who had planned to go down to Plaza de Mulas later on that day quickly changed his plans and took down his tent and got ready to lead the man down to the doctors stationed at Plaza de Mulas. Before they set off, the man tells us that his expedition is still at Berlin Camp and that they are probably looking for him right now. We write down his name and the name of his expedition leader so that we can tell him that he's been found and on his way to safety. Mattias had planned to do his acclimatization trip to Berlin Camp later in the afternoon but now decides to take the emergency radio and set off to find the Latvian expedition.

After about an hour Mattias meets some of the members from the Latvian expedition who are on their way down from Berlin Camp and tells them the happy news. "What about the woman?" they ask with a shocked expression on their faces... It turns out that the man had been climbing together with a woman but he hadn't mention this to us because of exhaustion and altitude sickness. The park rangers at Nido de Condores and Plaza de Mulas are notified by radio and a rescue operation is started. What follows next is remarkable, the team continues to walk down! When Mattias asks them why they are going down instead of helping search for the missing girl they reply that their guide had instructed them to go down to Plaza de Mulas. We found this really hard to understand. Mattias contacts the rest of the group by radio and explains the situation before continuing towards Berlin Camp to look for the missing woman.

Berlin Camp is fairly empty, most of the people camping here are on their way up to the summit or down to Plaza de Mulas. The blue and yellow tent to the right on the picture, later turns out to be the tent of the missing woman and the man. Mattias continues pass Berlin Camp towards White Rocks to get a better view of the Gran Acarreo where we were guessing that the woman could be.

After spending a few hours looking over the Gran Acarreo there is nothing more to do and Mattias turns around and starts walking back towards Nido de Condores. With only about 100 meters left to Nido de Condores an intense traffic starts on the emergency radio. The rangers call Mattias and inform him that the woman has been found by a group of climbers at the Independencia Hut (at about 6300 m.a.s.l.). She has high altitude cerebral oedema and she is unconscious and they ask him if he can go back to Berlin Camp and gather some people to help carrying her down. Sure, just turn around and do the whole walk up again for the second time that day. Not many people are willing to help out in Berlin Camp. One American guy and a couple from another Latvian expedition volunteer, not much when you are carrying a person at this altitude. To sacrifice valuable energy and time on helping others can lead to a failed summit attempt later, each individual has to make this decision against his/her conscience. Pissed off and disappointed on the lack of volunteers, Mattias calls up the rest of the group at Nido de Condores and tells them to move towards Berlin Camp and to bring our high altitude medicine with them. Marco and Olof quickly get ready and start moving, Robert decides to stay in Nido de Condores.

While we are waiting at Berlin Camp for the group carrying the woman a familiar face arrives, Gabriel Carbrera, the guide that we met a few days earlier. We explain the situation to him and he sets off to meet the group that now is 25 minutes away from us. When they get closer to Berlin Camp she regains consciousness (this normally happens when a HACE victim descends a few hundred meters) and can know stumble on her own feet with the support of two people. Amazingly her hands seem to have avoided the frostbite however, her feet were not in the same good condition. She had also lost her sun glasses the previous day and was now snowblind. Gabriel and one of the rangers that has now join us from Nido de Condores decide that she will rest for a few hours at Berlin Camp before continuing the descend to Plaza de Mulas. We offer to stay and wait to help but it is not concidered necessary and we turn back down to Nido de Condores. Notice in the picture the insuficient clothing she is wearing for this altitude and weather conditions, she should consider herself to be very lucky to come out of this alive.

We stop to rest on the way down. Everyone is totally exhausted but really happy that today's drama had ended reasonably good. Both lost climbers are alive but will pay for their mistakes with a few lost extremities. Here we see Mattias sitting down to gather some strength before the rest of the descend. He know realises he didn't have any sun protection for his face during the whole day but has been too busy to realize it. The result is a burnt face and lips. After having only four energy bars and two litres of water during the whole day it shall be good to eat the cod stew.

Here we see the lovely cod stew again. The altitude makes the water boil at 75 degrees celsius. When the water is poured into the bag the powder doesn't dissolve completely and the result is a crispy mix with hard pieces of dry fish...Never mind, it tasted delicious after a long and hard day!

Despite today's events we couldn't resist to capture yet another beautiful sunset. The evening was calm and the weather had now stabilized. Now a debate started over the time plan. Some of us wanted to continue to Berlin Camp tomorrow to make the summit push the day after according to the pre-set time plan. Others wanted to stay in Nido de Condores and rest after today's events. After negotiations it is decided that we will continue to Berlin Camp tomorrow and see how we feel when we get there. The pressure is growing when you feel that the summit is near...

Here we can see Mattias and Olof's tent the last night in Nido de Condores. When we finally got some peace and calm from the weather the next problem arises. The so called Cheyne-stokes. This symptom appears when the breathing rythm slows down during sleep and extended periods of no breathing occur. You wake up hyperventilating for a couple of seconds and have an unconfortable feeling of suffocation.