Pair rescued from frozen Icelandic mountain
TWO Welsh tourists have been rescued from the top of a mountain in Iceland after they became trapped without any equipment.
Michael Hughes, 20, from Penally, and Dayne Stone, 23, from Pembroke, had gone for an “ice climb” on Sunday night when things started to take a turn for the worse.
Having no gear with them, apart from torches, the duo ended up stranded at the top of the Botnsfjall mountain in west Iceland in freezing conditions, according to local media.
In a video posted on Facebook, Dayne recalled the ordeal – including the moment he thought the pair wouldn’t make it back down. He said: “We started climbing up and it got steeper and steeper and steeper, until we were eventually just climbing up vertical ice. We kept going because we were going to the top of a mountain and we figured eventually we’ll get to the top of the mountain and there’ll be a nice path down. But that didn’t quite work out. Basically, we got to the top of this mountain and the only way down was ice sheets or a few waterfalls which had frozen over, so we didn’t end up doing that.”
Knowing they needed help, the pair used torches they had packed to shine them down to a friend at the bottom, who went to get help. Dayne said: “There was a 30-person team at the base who tried to climb up to us in actual climbing gear, but they couldn’t even make it, which was quite good for us to know we’d done something so difficult. The commander of the search-and-rescue team actually phoned me up and was asking me whether, in my Two Welsh tourists had to be rescued by helicopter after finding the only way down this mountain was via its frozen waterfall
opinion, a helicopter would be able to fly in the visibility.”
The pair started their climb at 8pm, but called for a rescue at 11.30pm. But it wasn’t until almost 3am that the duo were rescued after the helicopter flew past them seven times.
In that time Michael and Dayne had to stand on a freezing ledge for over six hours waiting to be saved.
But the pair say they enjoyed the experience.
“Waiting was pretty savage,” Dayne said. “It was a good experience and we are very glad the Icelandic team came and rescued us.”