A rock climber in Washington who has survived a fall of hundreds of feet It killed his three unconscious companions for hours before wokening up in darkness, walking with internal bleeding and going to a salary phone to summon aid, the authorities said on them on Wednesday.
Speaking in a Seattle hospital, Anton Tselykh, 38, confirmed the theory of investigators that an anchor, called a piton, whom he and his companions used on Saturday evening to recall the first Winters arrows in the northern waterfall chain had snatched the rock.
Tselykh was in a satisfactory state on Wednesday morning at the Harborview Medical Center, which means that it was not in the intensive care unit, said Susan Gregg, director of media relations for Uw Medicine, in an email.
A climber was reminiscent of the piton – a pearly metal peak in rock cracks or the ice to which the climbers anchor their strings – and the other three were attached to it and awaited to descend, said Cristina Woodworth, who heads the sheriff research and rescue team and spoke with Tselykh by phone.
When the piton snatched from La Roche, the four plunged about 200 feet (60 meters) after the mountain side, landing in a ravine and plumming another 200 feet (60 meters) before resting, Woodworth said.
We still do not know if they had an anchor of aid at Piton, which is a common practice for climbers, said Joshua Cole, guide and co -owner of North Cascades Mountain Guides which has climbed in the region for about 20 years.
Tselykh has lost consciousness for several hours, waking up in darkness in a tangle of strings and equipment, suffering from internal bleeding and head trauma, Woodworth said.
It took eight hours in Tselykh to untangle, make your way on the rugged field of rock and snow – with the help of an ice tool similar to a pick -like – to his car, where he led around 40 miles (67 kilometers) to the community not made up of Newhalem and called for help, the authorities said.
The four climbers were friends, some of whom had already climbed together and seemed quite experienced, said Woodworth, adding that Tselykh was “obviously very affected by this”.
The climbers who were killed were Vishnu Irigireddy, 48 years old; Tim Nguyen, 63 years old; And Oleksander Martynenko, 36, said the Coroner of the county.
Olga Martynenko, the wife of Martynenko, said on Tuesday in an article on Facebook that her husband, whom she called Alex, had also left their son. She shared a link to a fundraising to help “during the most devastating period of our life”.
“I still can’t believe you left, my love,” she said.
Fluke Corporation, a testing company for testing equipment, shared on Wednesday in a statement that Iirigireddy was vice-president of manufacturer’s engineering.
“Vishnu was an extraordinary leader, and his loss is deeply felt in our organization,” the statement said.
