원정 개요

C3 at Makalu La
High point at NW Ridge.

Brupbacher left C4 (7700m) for the summit on 21 May at 2:00 am with Oscar Fernandez a member of the small team led by Jorge Egocheaga, according to Peter Hamor and Horia Colibasanu. She was slower than Fernandez and did not reach the summit as he did, but got to 8400m. Her Sherpa, Pasang Gyalzen, claimed they summited, but Egocheaga and her camera said 8400m only.

She had made the same progress reaching C4 as Colibasanu, Hamor and Joao Garcia, said Colibasanu and Hamor.

She had not been well during her entire climb, according to Fabrizio Zangrilli. She had been coughing a lot. But when Egocheaga and Ramos Martin, his teammate, met her at 8200m in the French couloir at 2:30 pm of the 21st, and they urged her to turn around because it was late, she refused and continued her ascent.

She and Pasang Gyalzen returned to C4 at about 10:30 pm, according to a statement by Martin and Egocheaga. Next morning at 5 o'clock Egocheaga said every one should descend as soon as possible and asked Brupbacher and her Sherpa how they were. They said were tired but well, but that afternoon Brupbacher was in C3 (7400m at the Makalu La), exhausted and unable to move. Efforts to find oxygen for her from various teams was fruitless for hours, and by the time some had been found, she had died.

Brupbacher died in C3 at 11:30 pm on the 22nd from pulmonary edema, hypoxia and cardiac arrest. Her body was left in the tent at C3; Zangrilli went up, collapsed the tent over her, and packed snow over the tent.

Sherpa:
Pasang Gyalzen Sherpa, 30/7/81, Makalu village, Everest X2