Woman left dangling for hours over crevasse

A BRITISH woman has been saved in an extraordinary rescue after she was left suspended on a rope over an Alpine crevasse.

Christine Colley, 56, suffered a heart attack after plunging through a layer of ice deep into a glacier in the Austrian Alps.

Her husband Cedric, 56, managed to hold on to the rope tethering the pair together - but did not have the strength to pull her to safety.

Left dangling for hours in the dark crevasse as freezing water from the melting glacier poured over her, Mrs Colley began to suffer from hypothermia.

But her husband managed to raise the alarm and emergency services arrived in time to resuscitate her and treat her for the cardiac arrest.

Dr Gunther Sumann, at Innsbruck University Hospital, said she was lucky to have survived. "She had already suffered a cardiac arrest and it was a struggle to keep her alive in the helicopter," he said.

"By the time she arrived here her core body temperature had plunged and severe hypothermia had set in. She was lucky because the hospital trauma ward has special equipment that is capable of gradually warming the blood. It is the only hospital in this region of Austria to have such a device, and it undoubtedly saved her life."

The accident bears similarities to that recreated in the 2003 drama documentary Touching The Void, in which two climber in the Peruvian Andes found themselves in the same predicament. However in that case, the lead climber had to cut the rope, sending his partner to the bottom of the crevasse.

Mr and Mrs Colley, from Birmingham, were on a climbing holiday in the Hinteren Oetztal in Tyrol when the accident happened.

As she fell through the ice into the crevasse, she almost pulled Mr Colley over the edge. He held on, however, and secured the rope to the ice before hiking to a mountain hut to raise the alarm.

An Innsbruck Police spokesman said: "They appear to have been well equipped with ropes and ice spikes. Without this equipment the ending would have been very different."

While Mr Colley was getting help, a group of other mountaineers discovered Mrs Colley by chance and managed to pull her to the surface. The police spokesman added: "The emergency medics arrived just in time to treat her for cardiac arrest. They managed to reheat her body and put her in the helicopter."

Mrs Colley is now out of danger. She is expected to remain in hospital for several days under observation.

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