I knew it couldn't be true but they kept on coming."Īfter her first expedition to Patagonia, in 2003, Suppé began to build her life around climbing, spending all of her money on gear and all of her spare time in the mountains. "I saw people walking toward me bringing tents and sleeping bags. During the night, she began to hallucinate, a symptom of hypothermia. "I knew that falling asleep meant death so I did everything in my power to stay awake," she said. Temperatures fell to 5 degrees Fahrenheit and her clothes, soaking wet from the fall, kept freezing to the ice. Suppé stayed with her partner through an excruciating night. When Suppé and Wiesenekker failed to get back to base camp, it was assumed they were just running late. Only three people - a caretaker and two drivers - had been told which peak the climbers were attempting, and to expect them back by nightfall. Every time she lifted her foot, blood poured out of her boot. Suppé had broken her right ankle, and her tibia and fibula bones had torn through her skin. Wiesenekker, who had broken his leg and taken serious blows to his head, was unable to move.
Despite suffering severe injuries, they were miraculously still alive. After alternately freefalling and skidding for more than 1,100 feet, the climbers landed at the bottom of the mountain face. I was waiting to finally lose consciousness when I realized that I was slowing down," the 32-year old Suppé said from her home in Mendoza, Argentina.
"We kept on falling through what seemed an eternity. Her climbing partner, Peter Wiesenekker, slipped on a patch of ice, blowing out their anchorage points and pulling down Suppé, who was tied to him. Suppé was a rope's length away from the summit ridge of Ala Izquierda del Condoriri's 17,761-foot peak when tragedy struck. For high-altitude climber Isabel Suppé, that moment came on a brutally cold day on a Bolivian mountain on July 29, 2010.
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