Susan survived avalanche on Indian glacier

Scot rescued friend from 100ft deep crevasse.

A Scots climber has told how she escaped death and saved an injured friend in a terrifying avalanche on a remote Indian mountain.

Susan Jensen became the first woman to climb the 23,021ft Chamsen peak and was part of a team that survived freezing temperatures and starvation during the ascent.

During the expedition, the team’s base camp on the North Shukpa Kunchang Glacier was swept away by a huge blast of air from a night-time avalanche.

The climbers, who had been asleep in their tents, were thrown 100ft across the surface of the glacier.

Another British climber, Andy Parkin, was pushed so far that he fell 100ft down into a crevasse where he was trapped.

Susan, 45, also came close to falling into a crevasse but stopped just in time. She and fellow climber Victor Saunders found Andy after a nerve-racking search in blizzards and temperatures of -15C.

She spent several hours hoisting him and his tent back to the surface. He had to be airlifted to safety by the Indian Air Force.

The team lost most of their supplies in the avalanche but continued on starvation rations, reaching the summit seven days after their brush with death.

Susan, from Inverkeithing, said: “We heard a few little rumbles that night before a really loud one that lasted a lot longer. We turned on our torches to look outside, but didn’t get time.

“The whole tent was rolled across the glacier. It was like a huge hand came down and swept us away.

“There were two of us in my tent but the force was so strong it blew us away. It took a while to find our boots and gear. It was snowing and very dark.

“We didn’t know when the next avalanche might happen. It’s the scariest moment I’ve had climbing.”

Andy later revealed that he thought the rest of the team had been killed in the accident.

Susan said: “Andy thought we had been obliterated because he couldn’t hear us inside the crevasse. It wasn’t until he spotted our head-torches at the top that he knew we were OK.”

Susan, who works as a statistician for the NHS, said the team had to come out of the valley where the avalanche happened so the Indian Air Force could rescue Andy.

This meant they then had to go back into the same valley when they resumed their expedition.

She said: “Knowing we had to go back into the area where it happened was very scary. Each time we heard snow coming down we started looking around to see where it was.”

The starvation rations the team were on also meant they all lost weight within a matter of days. She added: “I lost more than a stone. Everyone was very thin by the end.”

Susan, who spent five months mountaineering and trekking in India before the expedition, is now one of only a handful of Scottish women to have made the first ascent of a 7,000m peak.

And, despite the scary experience, she hasn’t lost her taste for adventure. She said: “I came home to Scotland for a day and then I was off again to go climbing in the Alps.

“I intend to do more challenges in future.”