The Most Daring Mountain Rescue Ever Attempted

Name: The Most Daring Mountain Rescue Ever Attempted
Uploaded: 2026-09-03T03:15:03+00:00
Duration: 21 min 11 s
Channel: eXtreme

00:00January 25th, 2018, 26,000 feet up Nanga Parbat, Tomek Matskevich is blind, barely breathing,

00:09and trapped on the mountain.

00:11His climbing partner, Elisabeth Rivolle, has 60 seconds to decide whether to leave him

00:16behind or stay with him and die.

00:19What happens next will trigger one of the most daring rescue attempts ever attempted

00:24on a mountain.

00:24Welcome to the extreme edge, where the stakes are high, but nobody's just a headline.

00:31When Tomek Matskevich arrived at Nanga Parbat in December 2017, he knew what he was in for.

00:37Nanga Parbat rises more than 26,000 feet above Pakistan, a wall of rock and ice so steep that

00:44one face climbs nearly 15,000 feet almost straight up.

00:48In winter, temperatures drop to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, avalanches bury entire routes,

00:56and the air holds so little oxygen that each step becomes a fight.

01:01Climbers call it the Killer Mountain.

01:04Tomek Matskevich called it home.

01:07And right beside him for this climb was his partner, Elisabeth Rivolle, who was an elite

01:12climber in her own right, who, back in 2008, made headlines by climbing three mountains in

01:17just 16 days, all completely solo and all without supplemental oxygen.

01:23And she saw Tomek as a free spirit, someone who really understood the almost mystical pull

01:30of these colossal peaks.

01:32So, on the morning of January 20th, 2018, Elisabeth and Tomek began their summit bid right

01:38in front of the base of Nanga Parbat.

01:40They carried all their own gear and set up small camps, and tried to make history.

01:46Their style of climbing this mountain, with a focus only on speed and self-sufficiency,

01:51and carrying nothing but a small tent and a Garmin satellite tracker, is called Alpine

01:56style climbing, and in the end it paid off, because by the morning of January 25th, 2018,

02:03just five days later, Tomek and Elisabeth were less than a thousand feet from the summit.

02:08This was the closest in all their years of attempting this summit that they had ever been.

02:14The air was incredibly thin here, each step took longer than the last, they both knew they

02:20were pushing their limits.

02:21But, this was the point where every previous attempt had ended, and now, they had to decide

02:28if this time would be different.

02:30Thought disappeared, fatigue disappeared, there was only the pull of the summit ahead of them,

02:36so close it stopped time, drawing their bodies upward without asking permission.

02:42Until sometime around 6.15pm, the same January 25th, 2018, it finally happened.

02:50Elizabeth planted her ice-covered boots on the true summit peak. By now, the sun had set behind

02:55the horizon, and the temperature had dropped to a dangerously low minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

03:02Tomek was just a short distance behind her, and when he finally caught up, Elizabeth couldn't

03:07contain her joy, screaming YES as she hugged her climbing partner. Elizabeth had just become the

03:14first woman ever to climb Nanga Parbat during the winter, and Tomek had finally reached the

03:19summit.

03:20After everything it had taken to get there, he was finally standing on top of the mountain.

03:25What could go wrong now? As it turned out, everything.

03:30Because as they were climbing up earlier in that minus 40 degree weather, Tomek's heavy breathing

03:36had completely frosted up the inside of his goggles. In the fading light, he couldn't

03:41see a thing, so in a desperate move just to see the icy terrain in front of him, Tomek briefly

03:47took his glasses off up there. It was a tiny, practical decision, but it sealed his fate.

03:54Because that one second exposed his bare eyes directly up there at 26,000 feet, and when

04:02he looked around, Elizabeth, still in glasses, noticed something strange covering his blue

04:08eyes. Then, he said it himself, Ellie, what's happening with my eyes? With panic in his voice,

04:16he said, Ellie, I can't see your head torch anymore. You're a blur. Elizabeth must have felt

04:22a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. She knew what this was. When he briefly removed

04:28his glasses, Tomek must have exposed his eyes to intense ultraviolet light, the type that damages

04:34the surface of the eye. And now, after hours of climbing through snow that reflected that light

04:40straight back at him, his eyes had been badly burned. Her climbing partner was blind on the summit

04:47of one of the most deadliest mountains in Pakistan, with the entire descent still ahead of them.

04:53They both started to panic. Because this wasn't the busy summer season with Sherpas, fixed ropes,

05:00and other climbing teams nearby. It was the dead of winter, and the mountain was completely abandoned.

05:05It was just the two of them up there. At 26,000 feet, the air is so thin that standard

05:12rescue

05:13helicopters physically cannot fly. The rotor blades have no air to push against, and even if they could,

05:19the nearest Pakistani military base was miles away across a frozen, hostile valley. There was no backup

05:28team waiting at a lower camp. There was no quick radio call for a rescue. They were days away from

05:34civilization and entirely alone. Elizabeth somehow managed to pull herself together and entered

05:41survival mode. She took Tomek's hand and placed it over her shoulder, and they began their descent. If

05:48there was any chance of survival, she had to move quickly. Then, it got worse, because as they began

05:56their desperate descent, Elizabeth heard a harsh, wet cough from Tomek. Then she looked down,

06:04and saw dark red drops of blood staining the white snow. At 26,000 feet, the air is suffocatingly thin.

06:13And with Tomek's body being starved of oxygen, his blood vessels and his lungs were under so much

06:19pressure that they actually started to leak. Tomek was freezing, blind, and literally drowning from the

06:28inside out. With every minute spent here, less and less oxygen reached his brain. Elizabeth managed to

06:36drag him down to 23,884 feet, but at this extreme altitude, survival is a ticking clock.

06:43Tomek. With only a fraction of the oxygen you'd find at sea level, the human body physically cannot heal,

06:49and cells actively die with every second you stay up there. The only cure for his failing lungs was to

06:57get lower fast. But Tomek was completely tapped out. He could no longer continue. They were forced to find

07:05shelter in a crevasse, and spent the night there pressed against the ice as the temperature continued

07:11to fall around them. And when morning came, Elizabeth had to make a choice everyone prays

07:18they never have to make. Her own body was failing. She had been climbing for hours up and guiding a

07:25blind man down.

07:26The terrain ahead was too dangerous, and Tomek was too weak to cross it. If she tried to force him

07:33onward,

07:33she could kill him. And every 60 seconds she stood there deciding, her own body was failing a little more.

07:41For a few minutes, Elizabeth was trapped between grief, hope, sadness, and anger. But the mountain doesn't wait

07:49for anyone to feel their feelings. And at the end, acceptance. Because she had only two real options, and the

07:57longer

07:58she waited, the clearer the choice became. They both knew it. So, Elizabeth dug out a small ledge inside

08:06the crevasse, and forced his freezing body into their only sleeping bag. Moving fast now, because every

08:12minute spent standing still was a minute her hands crept closer to being unusable. To stop the hurricane

08:19force winds from killing him instantly, she stacked heavy blocks of ice in front of his face. She left him

08:26with nearly all of their survival gear to keep him as safe as a blind man could be in the

08:30death zone.

08:31There was no time left to say a proper goodbye. Then came the last 60 seconds. With her hands already

08:39suffering from the early stages of severe frostbite, she brought out her Garmin InReach satellite device

08:45and typed out a desperate SOS to her husband, Tomek's wife, and her friend Ludovic Jean Biasi back in

08:52France that Tomek was blind, coughing up blood, and that they needed a helicopter immediately.

08:59Then she looked at Tomek, told him she would come back, and left. I can't imagine what that must have

09:07felt like, looking someone you care about in the eyes, promising that you'll return, knowing there's

09:13a real chance you'll never see them again. But Elizabeth had no choice. As she began the descent alone,

09:20she had no idea if the message sent actually went through. She just knew staying there definitely meant

09:27certain death. She could not have known that when her message had reached the outside world,

09:32it had set off an absolute explosion of panic and action. Her friend Ludovic instantly went into

09:38overdrive. He knew that getting high altitude military helicopters to fly into the death zone of Nanga

09:44Parbat was both dangerous and incredibly expensive. Because Nanga Parbat was deep in Pakistan,

09:53and the Pakistani military's Askari Aviation does not spin up their choppers on a promise.

09:59They require cash guarantees up front, and nobody involved had that kind of money sitting around.

10:05So Ludovic and a British businesswoman named Masha Gordon set up a massive crowdfunding campaign online,

10:12posting the message and their pictures and pleading for help. And the climbing community answered.

10:18Within hours, the story of two climbers trapped on the killer mountain went viral,

10:23and strangers from all over the globe started pouring money into the GoFundMe. Over $100,000 in record time.

10:32So, the money was there. The helicopters existed. You would think the response should have been immediate,

10:38right? I mean, all that was left was to go save them. Except, that is not what happened.

10:46While Elizabeth was stumbling blind through the freezing death zone, Polish and French diplomats,

10:52Pakistani army, and European insurance companies spent hours passing the buck arguing over who was

10:58responsible for the bill, and of course, when they were going to get paid. And even more incredibly,

11:04after the finances were finally sorted, a storm came in, which meant all rescue helicopters couldn't fly in that region.

11:12It took 48 hours, two full days before a rescue operation could even take place.

11:18And in those 48 hours, Elizabeth somehow had to survive completely alone.

11:24Her body was failing fast, starved of oxygen, and completely exhausted. Her mind began to play cruel tricks on her.

11:34She started hallucinating that people were bringing her hot tea. At one point, she even hallucinated that she

11:40needed to give these imaginary people her climbing boot as a thank you. And she actually did it.

11:46She took off her left boot thousands of feet up in the air in the middle of winter.

11:52By the time she snapped out of the hallucination five hours later, the brutal reality set in.

11:58Her foot had swollen and frozen so badly that she couldn't even force the heavy boot back on.

12:05She was going to have to climb down the most dangerous ice wall on earth with a practically bare left

12:11foot. Combine that with her wet gloves that had doomed her hands to severe frostbite,

12:16and it honestly looked like it was over for her. But 124 miles away, at the base of K2, four

12:25men were

12:25about to change that. Their names were Adam Bialetsky, Denis Urubko, Jaroslav Botor, and Pyotr Tomala.

12:33And they were in the middle of attempting their own historic winter summit on K2 when the message

12:39came through that two climbers were dying on Nanga Parbat. And they didn't hesitate. They abandoned

12:46their own expedition, packed their gear, and walked away from K2 and demanded to be on the rescue mission.

12:53So on January 27th at 1pm, two Pakistani military helicopters flew them right in the middle of the

13:00Himalayan winter down to Nanga Parbat. Now, flying a helicopter here in winter is incredibly dangerous.

13:08The air is so thin that the rotor blades struggle to even grab the air. Even worse, the pilots flying

13:15them had literally never flown into Nanga Parbat before. And as they got close, Denis had to literally

13:21lean out of the open chopper door into freezing winds just to point out the drop zone. They were

13:28dropped on a snowy ledge at roughly 15,700 feet, right at the base of the massive mountain face.

13:35As the helicopters flew away, the silence and the cold set in. The four climbers immediately got to work.

13:43From there, it was entirely on foot. Adam and Denis, starting from the drop zone at 15,700 feet,

13:51had to climb over 4,000 vertical feet straight up into the death zone just to reach the area where

13:57Elizabeth was last reported. Under normal conditions, heavily equipped teams take two or three full days

14:04to climb this specific section, moving slowly and carefully in broad daylight. To attempt it overnight,

14:11in the dead of winter, relying on nothing but headlamps, bordered on suicidal. But when Adam and

14:19Denis stepped onto the ice, they didn't just climb. For the first several hundred feet,

14:23they physically ran up the mountain. Behind them, Jaroslav and Piotr pitched a lower camp and followed with the

14:32heavy medical gear. For the first several hundred feet, Adam and Denis literally ran up this mountain.

14:39This route is a massive, steep wall of rock and ice. Normally, climbing this section takes teams two or

14:45three full days of slow, careful work. Adam and Denis were trying to do it in a matter of hours,

14:51in the dead of winter, in complete darkness. The only reason this was even possible was that

14:59neither of them was a stranger to this mountain. Denis had battled this exact route in 2003,

15:05and Adam had fought it in 2015. They climbed on pure memory for eight brutal hours, and after pushing

15:13their bodies to the absolute limit by moving up thousands of feet of frozen, broken terrain in the

15:19dark, finally, at around 2 a.m. on January 28th, right around 19,700 feet high on the Kinschilfer route,

15:28a tiny beam of light cut through the blackness. They heard a faint voice.

15:34Elizabeth! Nice to see you!

15:41They found her. When they reached Elizabeth, she was barely alive. She had been wandering

15:46in the dark without a headlamp, passing out from the cold. Her hands were frozen completely stiff,

15:53and that was a huge problem. A climber holds their own ropes when rappelling down a mountain,

15:59but Elizabeth couldn't grab anything, and Nanga Parbat's walls were as steep as the side

16:04of a tall building made of solid ice. If she let go, she would fall to her death.

16:11She couldn't move her own body. So Denis and Adam had to move it for her.

16:16Denis stayed above her, holding all of her weight on a single rope, and Adam strapped himself directly

16:22to Elizabeth and slid down the ice right next to her. They would slide her down a few feet, stop,

16:29drill heavy metal screws deep into the mountain to lock themselves in place, and then do it again.

16:35They did this over and over for five and a half hours, inching down the steep ice,

16:41until they finally reached the lower camp where the rest of the rescue team was waiting.

16:46But even then, getting her off the mountain was a miracle, because after the four climbers called

16:51for a helicopter rescue, they found out the terrain was too steep for a helicopter to actually land.

16:57So, the Pakistani rescue pilot had to hover a chopper in the freezing wind, resting just the front tips

17:05of the metal skids against the mountain wall, while the team shoved Elizabeth inside. It required

17:11perfect precision. But he did it. Once in, Elizabeth was flown off the mountain to Islamabad,

17:20then eventually home to France. But the mountain still took its toll.

17:26Despite multiple surgeries, the severe frostbite claimed parts of her hands and feet.

17:31She survived, but she would carry the physical scars of Nonga Parbat for the rest of her life.

17:37Elizabeth was safe. Tomek was not. And to understand what she was about to lose,

17:44you have to understand who she'd promised to come back for. Because Tomek Motzkevich wasn't

17:50just another climber who got unlucky. At 19, he was addicted to hardcore substances, spiraling with

17:57no clear way out. He got clean. Then he didn't just rebuild a normal life. After a few years in

18:04rehab, Tomek overcame his addiction, bought a yacht, and sailed around the Missourian lakes in northern

18:10Poland. A short time later, he had booked a flight to India, where he spent six months teaching English

18:16to kids affected by leprosy. It was during this time in Asia that he first saw Nonga Parbat, the mountain

18:25that would later become his lifetime obsession. While Elizabeth told his story to no one but herself,

18:31Tomek was still in that crevasse, alone, blind, and running out of hours. And this was his seventh

18:40time on the mountain. Neither he nor Elizabeth wanted it to be his last. Back in 2010, he and his

18:47close friend, Marek Klonowski, decided they wanted to become the first humans to climb the icy slopes of

18:53Nonga Parbat in the middle of winter. They gave it their best shot, but they failed. Tomek had no idea

19:01it

19:01would take him seven attempts before he'd finally reached the top. There were seasons where he and

19:07his climbing partners had so little money, they had to sell their belongings, including their winter

19:11gear, just to afford a ticket home. Another time, Tomek tried to stay behind in Pakistan after an

19:18expedition and get a local job just to pay for his return flight. But every winter, he came back like

19:25a boomerang. Nonga Parbat was supposed to be his crowning achievement. Seven winters, six failures,

19:33and he always got back home safely. But on January 28, 2018, things had changed. He was lying in a

19:42pitch

19:42black crevasse at 23,800 feet, completely blind, freezing, and slowly suffocating on his favorite mountain.

19:51Elizabeth was safe now, but safe didn't feel like anything close to relief, because now she knew

19:58exactly who she'd promised to come back for. A man who'd already beaten addiction, turned his life

20:03upside down, and gotten here. And that promise was hers alone to keep or break. His life had been in

20:11her frostbitten hands on the mountain. Now it was in the hands of four exhausted men who had to decide

20:18something she couldn't. Was there any version of this where they went back up for him? Elizabeth had

20:24told them exactly where she left him, but the math was brutal. A massive winter storm was rolling in,

20:31and temperatures were plunging even further. To climb thousands of feet higher into hurricane-force

20:38winds to search for a man who, medically speaking, was almost certainly already dead, wasn't a rescue

20:44mission anymore. That meant putting four more lives on the table for a body recovery.

20:50So, the Polish team made the only call they could. They had to leave him. Tomek Motzkiewicz was

20:58declared missing, presumed dead. His body remains on the mountain to this day. Elizabeth had to live with that.

The Most Daring Mountain Rescue Ever Attempted

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