A pair of climbers who spent Monday night huddled on a frigid slope of Crown Mountain after one of them suffered a devastating fall have released a video documenting their rescue.
Serguei Okountsev and his climbing partner were rapelling down from Spindle Peak when his partner slid more than 45 metres down the mountainside. She broke her ankle, injured her ribs and destroyed her helmet.
Okountsev said he saw blood on the snow, and worried at first that his partner had died when she didn't respond to a page on the radio.
This photo was taken moments before the fall.
Okountsev climbed down to her, activated their emergency locater beacon, and hunkered down for a harrowing wait while members of North Shore Rescue came to find them.
In the video, he says his partner spent the night in a "semi-coma" and describes how he kept their feet warm using fresh foot warmers through the night.
NSR rescuers reached the pair around 3:15 a.m. on Tuesday. They helped keep the injured woman warm, and waited with the climbers until daylight when they could be rescued.
At long last, a helicopter appeared on Tuesday morning to longline them to safety. Crews brought the woman to a local hospital first and then took Okountsev to the base of the mountain.
Okountsev spoke to waiting reporters, praising both his partner's strength for making it through the night and the swift response from rescuers.
"It's amazing, these guys are amazing," he said. "They stayed with us through the night. These are volunteers, unpaid volunteers. I don't know how much it takes to do such commitment."
Search manager Peter Haigh said the area was closed to the public, and that the pair shouldn't have been there in the first place. Okountsev, however, said they saw no signs indicating closure on their way to Spindle Peak.
It appears this may be the second time a companion of Okountsev's has been rescued by NSR. A video from 2012 with shooting and editing credit to Serguei Okountsev shows climbers being rescued from Crown Mountain after another 60 metre fall.
The full video of Tuesday morning's rescue can be seen below.
