Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Tomaz Humar, Slovenia's most accomplished mountaineer, got trapped last Friday 5,900 metres up Nanga Parbat, a 8,125-metre Himalayan summit that's been called "the most dangerous mountain in the world". Not content with the challenge of such a deadly peak, Humar decided to take a route that has never been scaled before. Now, his food supplies and radio batteries are running low and terrible weather continues to hamper rescue attempts. The remarkable thing is that all this is being documented on Tomaz Humar's blog. Today's entry is called "Tough night":

It was raining all night long, and in the morning it began to pour as if it were judgement day. Tomaz called in around 8:30 am. The fifth nigh in the icy trap was challeging. "If the weather stays like this, I won't be able to hold on for much longer, this is not a biouvac anymore, it's pouring all over me, and everything is freezing!" It was -5C at night — in his sleeping bag! To keep warm he tries to move around as much as possible, he was fighting the snow all night long which was narrowing down his living space. The doctor, Anda, advises him to keep drinking as much much warm fluids (melted snow/water or tea) as possible, as dehydration accelerates frostbite. But Tomaz told us yesterday that he drinks less than a litre of fluids a day! It's difficult to cook in that small space he is in, and his gas supply is low to — he's burning the last tank."

Our prayers go out to Tomaz Humar and his family. Our hopes are with the rescue teams. Note: the blog may be down when you try to access it, so huge is the interest at the moment. Yesterday, the site servers transferred 250GB of data.