Veteran climber Natalia Nagovitsina, aged 47, has been stranded on Victory Peak in Kyrgyzstan for at least ten days while facing brutal conditions, with temperatures plunging as low as -23C during the ordeal.
Victory Peak — also known as Jengish Chokusu or Pik Pobedy — stands as Kyrgyzstan’s tallest mountain at 24,406 feet. It is part of the remote Tian Shan range and sits on the Kyrgyzstan–China border near Lake Issyk-Kul, making rescue efforts incredibly difficult.
To give her a fighting chance against the freezing weather, the 49-year-old climber had also carried a small tent, food supplies, drinking water, and even a portable gas stove up the treacherous slope to her location.
Tragically, after performing this selfless act, Sinigaglia succumbed to hypothermia and the effects of low oxygen, losing his life shortly afterward.
Rescuers later recovered his body from an ice cave where he had collapsed, apparently from sheer exhaustion after the climb.
“It was an action to be proud of that unfortunately did not allow him to return to us. But that was Luca,” she added, reflecting on her brother’s bravery.
The latest setback led to the mission being called off, according to rescue leader Dmitry Grekov, who is also head of the mountain’s base camp operations.
Grekov revealed that Vitaly Akimov, the mountaineer leading one of the ground rescue teams, had to abandon the mission after sustaining painful back injuries in the earlier helicopter crash.
“It is unrealistic. It is unrealistic to survive at such an altitude.”
The Russian Mountaineering Federation had earlier said that any successful rescue at this point would amount to nothing short of a ‘miracle’.
“There’s a three-kilometre-long ridge, and it takes at least 30 people in such a situation to rescue a person from there.”
