"Goodbye. We are going to die."
That grim farewell crackled by radio out of the gale-force winds and blinding snow that swirled through the summit of 23,405-ft. Lenin Peak. By the time nine Japanese and American climbers reached the site a day later, it was too late. All that could be found were the frozen bodies of seven of the eight Soviet women mountaineers who perished while descending the U.S.S.R.'s third-highest peak. It was one of the worst disasters in mountaineering history.
The death of the Soviet climbers climaxed a season of continuing tragedy in the Pamirs, a rectangular region of glaciers and towering mountains that spills over into China and Afghanistan and is sometimes called the roof of the world. All summer, wildly unpredictable weather and bad snow conditions have added to the peril of climbing. Even before the doomed Soviet women began their ascent, six earlier climbers, including five Estonians who were caught in an avalanche, had been killed on Lenin Peak.
Despite the hazards, the Soviet climbers persisted. All were among the most experienced climbers in their country; four of them, including Team Leader Elvira Shatayeva, had scaled Lenin Peak before. This time, they set out to the top along a little climbed route, traversing the mountain from east to west. They reached the summit on Aug. 5 and were preparing to descend when the storm struck.
Final Message. Fierce swirling winds and heavy snow combined to produce a whiteout, obliterating vision. Desperately the women tried to ride out the storm by huddling together in their tents, but the winds ripped the fabric apart, exposing the climbers to sub-zero temperatures. Two days later, they radioed their base camp 10,000 ft. below in the Alai Valley that one team member was already dead and two others were very sick. Two more climbers died during a futile attempt to descend to a warmer, more sheltered position. By afternoon, three of the survivors were so ill they could not move. On the evening of the third day of the storm, the final radio message was sent.
The Japanese and American climbers who discovered the bodies had weathered the storm in camps little more than 1,000 ft. below the summit. Unaware of the tragedy, they stumbled upon the body of Shatayeva lying in the snow. Then they found three other corpses that were sprawled in the tattered remains of a tent. A fifth body was clutching a climbing rope, and two others were strewn down a slope, frozen along with their parkas. Pushing to the summit in an unsuccessful search for the eighth body, the climbers found telltale footprints that led over the edge of the ridge. "It was the weather that killed them," said Christopher Wren, a New York Times reporter who was on the expedition. "The Russians said it was the worst in 25 years." If the storm had held off, he added, "it would have been a very triumphant experience."