Stranded at 27,000 feet With No Oxygen

Name: Stranded at 27,000 feet With No Oxygen
Uploaded: 2026-10-15T00:31:30+00:00
Duration: 27 min 3 s
Channel: eXtreme

00:00She was freezing to death, but she was taking off her clothes.

00:04It's May 21st, 2016.

00:06A climber is sliding completely out of control down Everest to 27,500 feet.

00:12Her oxygen bottle is empty, her gloves are gone, her jacket is hanging open,

00:18and the guides who were supposed to get her expedition safely down the mountain are nowhere to be found.

00:24Her 11-year-old son is waiting back home.

00:28She and her three teammates are scattered around the mountain.

00:31Before the night is over, a stranger is going to decide which of the dying climbers he can save, if

00:38any.

00:38What he does next will expose an issue that runs much deeper than one bad climb.

00:44Welcome to the extreme edge, where the stakes are high, but nobody is just a headline.

00:50On the night of May 21st, 2016, 42-year-old British climber Leslie Binns left Camp 4 with the Sherpa

00:58and started toward the summit.

01:00This had been a long time coming.

01:02As a former soldier who had spent 13 years in the British Army and lost an eye in the service,

01:08climbing was his escape from PTSD, and Everest was the biggest version of that escape there was.

01:14He didn't know that somewhere above him, a woman with an empty oxygen bottle was already in trouble.

01:21By close to midnight, he was just below a landmark called The Balcony at around 27,500 feet.

01:27He had been climbing up from Camp 4 for about four hours, pushing his body through the freezing dark after

01:34weeks of exhausting acclimatization climbs.

01:36The temperature was 20 below zero Fahrenheit.

01:40He'd been fighting a nasty cough for days, but tonight he felt strong.

01:45So when two Sherpas coming down toward him from the summit stopped and asked him for water, he handed them

01:51some.

01:51He had plenty to spare and wasn't worried about running out, so giving away a little water meant nothing.

01:57It seemed a bit strange because they were coming down on their own with no clients beside them, but Leslie

02:04didn't think much of it, at least not at the time.

02:07And after he gave them the water, he watched them pick their way back down into the dark.

02:11He climbed himself back onto the fixed rope and turned up toward the thing he'd wanted for years.

02:17And that's when he heard it.

02:19This raw, loud scream.

02:22It sounded like a wounded animal screaming for help, and it was getting louder and closer.

02:28He looked up.

02:29Somewhere above him, in the pale moonlight, a shape that looked like a body was sliding down, like a ragdoll

02:36out of control on this wall of rock and ice.

02:39It was attached to the exact same rope he was clipped to, and the climber was coming down fast.

02:45Leslie was stunned.

02:46He had no idea who it was.

02:49All he knew was that if this falling climber hit him while he wasn't braced, the sheer force of it

02:54would rip them both right off the mountain.

02:56So he dug the metal spikes of his boots deep into the ice.

03:00He leaned his entire weight back against the mountain, clicked his safety tether as tight as it would go, and

03:06just waited for the impact.

03:09Seconds later, the climber slammed into him with brutal force.

03:12If Leslie had been standing just a few feet higher up the rope, or if he hadn't dug his boots

03:18in with everything he had,

03:19Her weight and momentum would have ripped him clean off of his feet and put him over the edge, down

03:25thousands of feet into the pitch black.

03:28Leslie should have been absolutely furious.

03:30This stranger had just nearly killed him, 1600 feet away from the summit he had spent years dreaming about.

03:38He grabbed her by the shoulders to steady her, probably ready to scream at her.

03:42But when he shined his headlamp on her to see what on earth was going on, the anger instantly vanished.

03:49The first thing the beam caught was her severely swollen hands with no gloves at 20 below zero, on a

03:57wall where bare skin starts dying in minutes.

04:01Her weather jacket was hanging wide open with her bare chest exposed to the wind.

04:06Then, he looked at her oxygen regulator, the gauge that tells you how much air is left in the bottle.

04:12It read empty.

04:14Now, Leslie wasn't a doctor, but he had seen enough in combat to know exactly what he was looking at.

04:20Her brain, probably because it was starved of oxygen, had started misbehaving so badly that it was tricking her body

04:27into thinking she was burning up while she was actually freezing to death.

04:31This was why she was stripping off her clothes, and when he looked at her face, he realized he knew

04:37her.

04:38They'd met once, briefly, at a lower camp a few days earlier.

04:42Her name was Sunita Hazra.

04:45She was a nurse from West Bengal, and though he had no idea, by now, she had been on the

04:50move for about 28 hours, ever since she'd left Camp 4 the evening before.

04:56But something wasn't adding up to Leslie.

04:58He knew Sunita wasn't planning a solo climb.

05:01In fact, she was part of an expedition that had left Camp 4 together with Sherpa guides, whose whole job

05:07was to get each of them up this mountain and back down again.

05:11And on summit night, a guide is supposed to be within arm's reach of a client, watching every bottle and

05:17every breath.

05:18So, where was everyone?

05:21Leslie swept his headlamp up and down the rope.

05:24No movement.

05:25And then, Leslie remembered the two Sherpas who had passed him earlier, coming down without any climbers beside them.

05:32At the time, it had seemed like a small, strange detail.

05:36Now, it made sense.

05:39Nobody was coming for Sunita Hazra.

05:42So, he got her back on her feet and clipped her safety gear onto the rope, hoping she had just

05:47enough strength left to slowly slide herself down the rest of the way.

05:51All she had to do was keep her feet against the mountain and slowly control herself down the rope.

05:57For the first 60 feet, it worked.

05:59But then, Sunita's legs completely folded, and she collapsed back into the ice.

06:05Her strength was gone.

06:07At this exact moment, Leslie had to make an impossible choice.

06:12He had a limited amount of oxygen he was carrying himself.

06:15Choosing to help her would mean dragging her down with him, which would burn through his oxygen twice as fast.

06:21It could easily push his own body to total failure.

06:25So, trying to save her meant definitely throwing away his summit, as well as risking his own life.

06:31He had no legal obligation to this woman.

06:33She wasn't his client.

06:35She wasn't on his team.

06:36If he unclipped, stepped around her, and kept climbing, he would finally reach the summit he had dreamed about for

06:42years, and no one would judge him.

06:44But, Leslie Benz simply wouldn't let himself leave a dying woman in the snow.

06:49So, just 1,600 feet from the top of the world, he looked at his Sherpa over the roaring wind,

06:54and told him the summit push was over.

06:57He was abandoning his lifelong dream to take this stranger down.

07:02But, before they even began, Leslie did something insane.

07:05He took his own spare oxygen bottle, turned the flow up to around 3 liters per minute, which is almost

07:12twice the flow climbers normally use, and strapped it to Sunita so she could breathe.

07:17Every breath she took was now eating into oxygen that Leslie might need later, but without it, Sunita might not

07:24have a lighter.

07:25Then, he secured her to the rope and began to bring her down.

07:29Now, deciding to save someone takes a second.

07:32Getting them down is not that easy, because Leslie quickly discovered that giving Sunita oxygen didn't suddenly make her capable

07:39of walking.

07:40Her legs were barely working, she couldn't keep her balance.

07:44Every few steps, her weight would collapse against him, and Leslie would have to catch her, pull her upright, and

07:51start all over again.

07:53It was almost like trying to get your completely wasted friend home from the pub.

07:57Except this was happening at 27,500 feet, in freezing, pitch-black darkness, in the most hostile environment on Earth.

08:06It was slow, but they kept moving, step by step, down a steep wall of blue ice.

08:13That's old glacier ice, hard and glassy.

08:16So hard that the metal spikes on your boots barely bite into it.

08:21Then, the fixed rope, the mountain's safety line, ran out.

08:25Every climber up here clips onto it, and it's the only thing that turns a slip into a stumble instead

08:31of a fall.

08:32Now, there was no rope, and in front of them was an open stretch of about 100 feet, with nothing

08:37to clip to and nothing to grab.

08:40And the only thing holding Sunita to the mountain was him.

08:43If either of them slipped, there was nothing to stop them.

08:46And then, just right then, snow started blowing in, thicker and thicker, until he couldn't tell where the ground ended

08:55and the sky began.

08:56At night, on a slope, with no rope, and many had no idea if he was walking downhill or toward

09:03a cliff.

09:05So, Leslie did the only thing he could think of.

09:08He looked for something big that wasn't going anywhere.

09:11Across the valley, through the snow, he could just make out the shape of a neighboring mountain called Lhotse.

09:17He knew roughly how high it stood next to him, so he used it like a compass, checked how high

09:23he was against its outline, and kept walking down.

09:26But it wasn't going to be that easy.

09:28See, under the snow accumulated on the mountain that season are deep cracks in the glacier,

09:34sometimes hidden under a thin layer of snow, that can drop a person into the ice.

09:39They're called crevasses, and Leslie fell into them again and again, chest-deep, waist-deep, four or five times by

09:48his own count.

09:49Each time he had to haul himself out, get back on his feet, and get Sunita moving again.

09:54It was torture, but somehow he managed to drag her across the gap.

09:59They were still alive, but just as he looked down through the blowing snow to see how much further they

10:04had to go,

10:05he saw something weird.

10:08About 300 feet below them, somebody was waving.

10:12At first, Leslie couldn't tell if it was a person at all.

10:16The snow was blowing sideways, his headlamp was catching nothing but white,

10:21and after hours at this altitude, he knew his own brain could start showing him things that weren't there.

10:27But the shape kept moving, waving, over and over,

10:31and when he got to him, he could see it was a climber in bad shape, flapping his arms in

10:37the snow.

10:38His name was Shabash Paul, an Indian climber and one of Sunita's teammates.

10:44Paul had reached the summit earlier that day, and then his body had given out on the way down.

10:49Leslie didn't know any of that yet.

10:51All he had known was that he had gone from finding one dying person completely alone on Everest to finding

10:57a second.

10:58Now, Leslie was already running on empty.

11:01Getting one person down this mountain is hard enough, and now he had two.

11:06Up here, extra weight means extra effort, and extra effort burns oxygen he didn't have to spare.

11:13But he wasn't going to walk away from a man waving at him in the dark,

11:17so he got to Paul and clipped all of them together.

11:21Now it was four people on one line.

11:23Leslie, his Sherpa, Sunita, and Paul.

11:28Clipping people together works like a chain.

11:30If one person slips, the others can hold them.

11:33But it works the other way, too.

11:36If one goes, they can pull everybody with them.

11:39Paul was still wearing a heavy down suit.

11:42His oxygen mask was still on.

11:44Remember that.

11:45It's going to matter in a minute.

11:46They started down, and it fell apart almost at once.

11:49Every few steps, somebody's legs would give out.

11:53Leslie would haul them up, get the line moving again, and a few steps later, it would happen again.

11:59He was carrying the whole team.

12:01Then, once they had a rare break in the weather, Leslie's Sherpa did something strange.

12:06He unclipped himself from the group, crossed over to where the fixed rope was, and clipped in there.

12:13Then, he headed down toward Camp 4 by himself.

12:17By Leslie's account, he just... left.

12:21We don't know why, all we have is Leslie's side, and it was a terrible night for everybody on that

12:27mountain.

12:27But what it meant was Leslie was now completely on his own in the freezing dark, tied to two people

12:33who couldn't walk.

12:34He could see where the fixed rope was, but it was just out of reach.

12:39That meant Leslie was standing on a slope in a whiteout with two people who couldn't stand, and the ground

12:45itself was full of hidden cracks.

12:48Leslie had no choice but to try and get them moving again, but coordinating two exhausted people on steep ice

12:55is impossible.

12:57Almost immediately, somebody lost their footing.

13:00Then, all three of them went sliding down that slope in the dark, faster and faster, with no way to

13:08steer or stop.

13:10Leslie had one clear thought.

13:12That's it. Your life is done.

13:15But before they shot over the edge, they hit a patch of softer snow.

13:19The friction caught them, and they finally came to a violent stop.

13:24When Leslie caught his breath and looked up, the three of them were scattered across the ice, about 165 feet

13:30apart from each other.

13:32Sunita was above him and off to his left.

13:35Shabash was above him and off to his right.

13:38And Shabash had ended up waist-deep in one of those hidden cracks, the same kind of crevasse that had

13:43been swallowing Leslie all night.

13:46And as Leslie lay there in the dark, struggling to pull air into his burning lungs, a horrifying reality set

13:52in.

13:53His body was completely finished.

13:56He had no energy left.

13:58He barely had the strength to stand up, let alone drag two people the rest of the way down to

14:04camp.

14:05If he tried to save them both, all three of them would freeze to death on this slope tonight.

14:11Which meant Leslie was going to have to look at two very sick people and decide which one of them

14:18he was going to save.

14:19So, Leslie made the simple calculation that Sunita was closer to the fixed rope.

14:24More importantly, she could still move.

14:27Barely.

14:28But if Leslie could somehow get her back onto her feet, there was a chance he could get her across

14:33to it.

14:34Paul, on the other hand, was stuck waist-deep in a crevasse.

14:38But he was still shouting.

14:41He still had his thick downed suit protecting him from the cold.

14:44And most importantly, he still had oxygen.

14:48In Leslie's exhausted mind, that meant Paul was both harder to save in the state he was,

14:54and still had a chance of surviving where he was until somebody else came down the mountain.

14:59So, Leslie crawled back towards Sunita and tried getting her onto her feet, but her body just wouldn't cooperate.

15:08And this was where the calm rescue ended.

15:11He told her to think about her family.

15:13Then he told her about his young daughter waiting for him back home.

15:17He bellowed at her that he was not going to die on this mountain just because she wouldn't put in

15:22the effort to stand up.

15:24Something about his rant got through to her.

15:26Sunita got to her feet, and somehow, together, they made it across to the fixed rope.

15:32But this was in no way a normal descent.

15:36At points, Sunita's legs simply refused to work, so she wrapped her arms around his shoulders,

15:42and Leslie carried her on his back, almost like a piggyback, while he worked his way down the ice toward

15:47Camp 4.

15:49Remember, this was at an altitude where your lungs are screaming for air that isn't there.

15:53Now imagine adding the dead weight of a fully grown adult in a heavy snowsuit to your back,

15:58while breathing oxygen that was simply not enough.

16:02Every single step meant kicking his metal boot spikes into the ice,

16:06praying they held, and lowering them both a few inches at a time in the pitch black.

16:11It took brutal, agonizing hours in the dark to descend.

16:16But somehow, in the freezing, pitch-black hours of the early morning of May 22nd,

16:22Leslie dragged Sunita into his own tent at Camp 4 and zipped the nylon door shut against the howling wind.

16:29When he got a good look at her in the light of his headlamp, her condition was terrifying.

16:34Her right hand had turned a sickening, dark blue.

16:38Leslie shoved her into his own sleeping bag to trap whatever body heat she had left.

16:43He found a fresh pair of gloves, he heated some water,

16:47and desperately tried to nurse her freezing fingers back to life.

16:51He had saved her life, but the nightmare wasn't over.

16:54Camp 4 is at 26,000 feet.

16:57It's a staging ground, not a hospital.

17:00You can't stay there.

17:01If you stay in the South Coast, you die.

17:04When the sun finally came up the next morning,

17:07an expedition doctor from another team came over and examined Sunita.

17:11Sunita was alert, which meant Leslie's oxygen had saved her brain,

17:15but she was in massive danger and needed urgent medical attention.

17:19And Leslie was so physically broken from his recovery efforts that he couldn't help her anymore.

17:24Which meant if Sunita Hasra wanted to see her 11-year-old son again,

17:28she was going to have to climb down the rest of Mount Everest almost entirely on her own.

17:34So, she got out of the tent,

17:36and running on nothing but pure adrenaline and the thought of seeing her 11-year-old son,

17:41she started descending.

17:42It was brutal.

17:44Navigating ropes requires grip strength,

17:47but Sunita's hands were numb blocks of ice.

17:50At one point, she slipped,

17:52took a hard fall on the ice,

17:54and snapped her wrist.

17:55Now, she was navigating some of the steepest,

17:59most dangerous drops on Earth with dying fingers and a broken arm.

18:03But she didn't stop.

18:04She pushed through the agony,

18:07crawling on her hands and knees

18:08across a sloping section of rock called the Yellow Band,

18:12as a second freezing night fell on the mountain.

18:15By the time she finally made it down to Camp 3,

18:18a rescue helicopter was waiting.

18:20The pilot hovered over the steep, icy face,

18:23dropping a winch cable down to pull her to safety.

18:26After being abandoned in the dark by the guides she had paid to protect her,

18:31the trauma had completely broken her trust.

18:33She looked at the crew offering to help her,

18:36turned them down,

18:37and kept going alone.

18:39And finally, on May 23rd,

18:41almost two full days after Leslie first found her in the dark,

18:45Sunita reached Camp 2.

18:46A helicopter touched down,

18:49loaded her in,

18:49and this time,

18:51she allowed them to fly her out of the mountains,

18:53directly to a hospital in Kathmandu.

18:56When she got to the hospital,

18:58the doctors finally saw what the mountain had done to her.

19:01Her broken wrist was hugely swollen from smashing into the ice.

19:05Her lungs were wrecked

19:07from two days of suffocating in the death zone.

19:10But the worst part was her hands.

19:12The freezing cold had killed the flesh on her fingers.

19:16Surgeons ultimately had to amputate the dead tips

19:19just to save the rest of her hands.

19:21She had been left for dead in the dark.

19:24She had broken her bones

19:26and crawled down the deadliest mountain on earth

19:28on her hands and knees.

19:30She was going home missing pieces of herself,

19:33but she was still alive.

19:35But Sunita was only one member of a four-person team,

19:38and while doctors in Kathmandu

19:40were trying to save what was left of her fingers,

19:43the truth about the other three

19:45was beginning to emerge.

19:47Because remember,

19:48Leslie left Paul behind in the darkness,

19:51convinced he still had a chance

19:52because of his downed suit and oxygen.

19:55And he was right in a sense.

19:57Paul actually survived the night.

20:00Trapped in the ice,

20:02in the freezing blackness,

20:03he managed to stay alive.

20:05When the sun came up the next morning,

20:07a different expedition team's doctor,

20:09a woman named Emily Johnston,

20:11found him still clipped to the rope,

20:13his mask off,

20:15his speech slurred,

20:16just 500 feet above Camp 4,

20:19alive.

20:20She gave him medication on the spot,

20:22then had him walk to a tent

20:24where his own team's guides were stationed.

20:26The same Sherpas who should have been with him

20:28were resting.

20:29For a moment,

20:30this looked like it might have a second miracle in it.

20:34He'd made it through the worst of the night alive.

20:36But around midday,

20:38base camp radioed down an order.

20:41Get the team moving to Camp 2.

20:43His own guides started walking him down,

20:46but his body had been pushed too far

20:48past the limits of human endurance.

20:51Paul passed away that afternoon on the way down,

20:53in the hands of the very team

20:55that was supposed to have gotten him

20:56up and down this mountain safely in the first place.

21:00Sunita's other two teammates were Paresh Nath,

21:03a one-handed tailor who'd sewn his own climbing suit.

21:05He had turned back near the balcony on his own

21:08early in the summit climb

21:09because he was feeling unwell,

21:11and he never made it back to Camp 4.

21:14Indian army climbers found him the next morning,

21:17about 65 feet off the route,

21:20sitting in the snow,

21:21his legs numb and barely alive.

21:24They'd carried him to their own tent,

21:26they gave him soup and coffee,

21:28but he passed away within minutes of drinking it.

21:32Gautam Ghosh was the last member of the team.

21:34He was a police officer who shared an apartment with eight relatives

21:38and had a dream to somehow reach the top of the world,

21:42but he never got even that far.

21:44He was last seen alive that first night at around 27,000 feet,

21:49still clipped to a fixed rope without gloves or a mask.

21:53Nobody knows exactly when his body gave out.

21:56His body stayed on that mountain,

21:58frozen for an entire year.

22:00Three of the four people who left Camp 4 that night with Sunita

22:03never came home.

22:05Now, when three people die and an entire expedition collapses,

22:08you would expect a massive investigation.

22:11You would expect agencies to be shut down.

22:14You would expect at least someone to go to jail.

22:16But this is Everest.

22:18To understand what went wrong,

22:20you have to look at how Sunita and her team got there in the first place.

22:24Climbing Everest is insanely expensive.

22:27Big Western guide companies charge anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 per person.

22:33But Sunita's team were working-class people.

22:36A nurse, a police officer, a tailor.

22:39They couldn't afford that.

22:41So they went with a budget agency that offered the trip for half the price.

22:45And the only way a company cuts the price of climbing Everest in half

22:49is by cutting the things that keep you alive.

22:52They hire fewer Sherpas and cheaper, less experienced guides

22:56who might not know how to handle a crisis.

22:58And most dangerously, they don't bring enough spare oxygen.

23:02The agency had promised each climber at least five bottles for the trip.

23:06But as Leslie saw when he checked Sunita's empty gauge in the dark,

23:10they didn't have nearly enough.

23:13So when things went wrong,

23:15there was simply no extra air.

23:17And the guides had no idea what to do.

23:20The government of Nepal is supposed to stop this from happening.

23:24By law, every single expedition on Everest

23:27has to bring along a government official called a liaison officer

23:31who should sit at base camp,

23:33track the climbers,

23:34and, if need be,

23:36step in to order a team down

23:38if they leave camp four late.

23:40The Bengali team had one of these officers assigned to them,

23:44and he filed a full report on the expedition afterward.

23:47Describing what had happened up there in detail.

23:50Journalists later confirmed this man never even set foot on the mountain.

23:55He wrote a detailed account of a night he never saw.

23:59The night Sunita's gloves came off at 20 below,

24:02the night Paresh ended up sitting in the snow,

24:0565 feet off the route.

24:07The night Gutam was last seen clipped to a rope

24:11with no gloves and no mask.

24:13And for the agency that put them on the mountain in the first place,

24:17well, despite three of their clients dying,

24:20that agency didn't get shut down.

24:22Nobody has ever found a record of a formal investigation into them.

24:26Nobody was fined,

24:27nobody lost a license,

24:29and as far as anyone can tell,

24:31they kept operating.

24:32It was a disaster waiting to happen,

24:35created by a company trying to save money

24:38in a place where being cheap might just get you killed.

24:42The disaster did force some real changes.

24:45Starting in 2017,

24:47West Bengal introduced much tougher rules

24:50for climbers who wanted government support

24:52to climb mountains above 26,000 feet.

24:55Climbers now had to be under 50 years old,

24:58pass medical tests at a governmental hospital,

25:00and prove they had successfully climbed

25:02at least four mountains above 18,000 feet

25:05within the previous five years.

25:08Climbers also needed insurance

25:10that could pay for things like a helicopter rescue

25:12or Sherpas sent high onto the mountain

25:15to bring them down.

25:16And if you ignored the new requirements,

25:18the West Bengal government made it clear

25:20that it wasn't going to pay to rescue you.

25:23Nepal also started changing how Everest was controlled.

25:27Authorities cracked down on companies

25:29selling illegal overnight stays at Everest Base Camp

25:32to people who weren't actually there to climb.

25:35And Nepal moved toward tougher climbing laws

25:38and even established a government office

25:40directly at Everest Base Camp,

25:43partly so there would actually be officials

25:45on the mountain monitoring what was happening

25:47instead of trying to manage expeditions

25:49from hundreds of miles away.

25:52Leslie was awarded the silver medal

25:53by the Royal Humane Society for saving Sunita.

25:56And when reporters asked him how he felt

25:59about throwing away the summit

26:00he had dreamed of for years,

26:02his answer said it all.

26:04No summit is worth a life.

26:06I am immensely proud that I helped Sunita.

26:09I just wish I could have done more.

26:12Leslie's biggest regret wasn't that he couldn't summit,

26:15it was that he couldn't save Shubash too.

26:18And maybe that tells you everything you need to know

26:20about the difference one stranger can make on Everest.

26:23Because Sunita was lucky enough to crash into a man

26:26who decided her life mattered more

26:28than standing on top of a mountain.

26:30Her guides were already on their way back down.

26:33But Brian Dickinson had no stranger coming to save him.

26:37No Sherpa, no eyesight, and soon, no oxygen.

26:42Brian was standing completely alone at 29,000 feet

26:46when his vision suddenly disappeared.

26:49And he still had the entire mountain left to climb down.

26:52Click on this video to watch one of the wildest

26:55Everest survival stories you've probably never heard.

Stranded at 27,000 feet With No Oxygen

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