A Heartbreaking Decision on Everest: The Tragic Story of Francys Arsentiev
Even in cases where the person is still alive, climbers have had to weigh up the risk of trying to save someone’s life with endangering their own. A particularly sad case with tragic consequences occurred in May in 1998. Francys Arsentiev had just become the first American woman to summit Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen. While she and her husband, Sergei, were descending following this momentous achievement, they became separated. When Sergei arrived back into camp on May 23rd, he realised that Francys had not made it down.
Although exhausted, Sergei decided to try and rescue her. During his ascent, he met an Uzbek team of climbers who had found Francys in difficulty. The Uzbek team had tried in vain to rescue Francys, abandoning their own summit attempt in the process, but had to give up when their oxygen ran out. The men had no choice but to abandon Francys to save their own lives. Sergei continued his ascent to try and save his wife’s life.
The following morning, a team of climbers including, Ian Woodall and Cathy O’Dowd, discovered Francys, who amazingly was still alive, but was slipping in and out of consciousness. O’Dowd and Woodall spent nearly an hour with Francys in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celcius. “Don’t leave me,” Francys pleaded, but O’Dowd and Woodall realised that she was beyond rescuing and had to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave her behind. O’Dowd recalls the experience in her book, Just for the love of it: “I had never encountered anything like this. I had passed bodies, I had friends not come back, but I had never watched anyone die. Nor had I had to decide to leave them.”
As was the case with Paljor (Green Boots), Francys Arsentiev’s body remained right next to the North Col route for years, being passed by hundreds of climbers going to and from the summit. In 2007, Ian Woodall returned to move Francys body away from the North Col route and out of sight. He brought with him a note from her family which he put it in her pocket before covering her body with the American flag.
