Santiago Quintero Rescued on Makalu After Summit

An interesting high altitude rescue attempt has been taking place over on Makalu over the past couple of days. Santiago Quintero has been officially brought down to Makalu base camp after he recently succeeded in summiting, but then fell victim to HACE (High-Altitude Cerebral Edema) on his descent.

Santiago’s summit was reached without the use of supplemental O2, and by everyone else’s standards, he seemed to be going rather well with his climb. He reached the summit a full 2 hours ahead of time. Upon his descent, Santiago had to be helped back to high camp by fellow climber Ralf Dujmovits. After Santiago was successfully brought back to high camp, he would then have to suffer through a night of emergency first aid, before a Brazilian team sent up two Sherpas to help bring him back down.

From ExplorersWeb:

“Argentinean climber Hernan stayed behind in camp
3 with Santiago to administer first aid. The following day, the
Brazilian team sent up two Sherpas who helped Santiago down.

Santiago lost most of his toes to frostbite during a solo climb on
Aconcagua in 2002. He is determined to keep climbing, and would like to
go to K2 next year, providing all goes well after his ordeal on Makalu.”

Earlier in the day, ExWeb had posted an interview with Santiago Quintero that they had conducted before his attempt on Makalu. During the interview it was mentioned that Quintero would be attempting K2 in 2009. They asked him if he would use oxygen on his K2 bid, being a bit of a harder and higher climb. Quintero answered:

“ I would never climb with oxygen; this is not climbing on your own.”

Let’s hope his recent bout with HACE and a bit more frostbite will allow him to recover sufficently for his bid on K2. These high-altitude rescues are always a gamble, but luckily, this one has worked out thus far.