In the end, all the effort was in vain: this of Nima Tshering Sherpa, who had left his oxygen bottle to his client in the death zone and had waited with him for hours; the effort of the four-man rescue team that had ascended to him, provided him with first aid and then brought him down the mountain so far that he could be flown out; that of the helicopter crew, who had first searched for him in an extremely risky manoeuvre and later flown him out from the flanks of the mountain on a long rescue line; the effort of the doctors in Kathmandu and then in Singapore, who fought for his life.
The severe frostbite and further stress of the stay for more than 40 hours at an altitude of 7,500 meters were in the end too much for his body. According to consistent reports, Wui Kin Chin died in a hospital in Singapore. The mountaineer from Malaysia was 49 years old. His rescue from the eight-thousander Annapurna was initially celebrated as a litttle miracle. A dispute then broke out about whether he could have been rescued earlier or not.
On three eight-thousanders
Wui Kin Chin worked as an anaesthetist at a clinic in Singapore. In spring 2018, he scaled Mount Everest thus completing his collection of the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains of all continents. In fall 2017, he had climbed his first eight-thousander: Manaslu in Nepal. On Tuesday last week he also reached the 8,091-meter-high summit of Annapurna – late in the day, as the last of 32 climbers and almost at the end of his strength – which was no longer enough for the descent. R.I.P.