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The survivors knew better than to hope for rescue from below. But all through the day on August 9, they stayed in their tents, certain that they could not get down in the ongoing storm. Only the next morning, when they woke to blue sky (though the wind was still raging), did they rouse themselves to action.

Willi Bauer was the motivating force. “Aussa! Aussa!” he yelled at Wieser and Imitzer—colloquial German for “Out! Out!” In the other tent, Diemberger and Mrufka slowly put on their boots. They knew that Rouse was now beyond help, but, as Diemberger put it, “The prospect of leaving him here is a ghastly one.” Tottering around outside the tents, he noted, was “like having to learn to walk again.”

Diemberger paid a last visit to Tullis. He later wrote, “I cannot see her face. The tent is half caved-in, but has not collapsed. I move the sleeping bag sealing the opening, and put the down jacket over her feet…. For the last time, I touch her—then I leave her alone.”

By this point, the other four survivors had already started down, but almost at once, the catastrophe deepened. Wieser and Imitzer were able to walk only a little more than 300 feet before they fell down in the snow. Mrufka and Bauer desperately tried to get them back on their feet, but had to give up.

Only minutes later, Diemberger came upon the doomed men.

I reach Hannes. He is sitting in the snow, with his back to me. A few metres further on Alfred is lying face down on the furrowed surface, completely still. He must be dead. Hannes moves his arms weakly, rowing the air in slow motion…. Then I see his face. His eyes, blank, stare into space. He does not see me. I shout his name, but he does not even move his head.

To save himself, Diemberger, too, had to leave Imitzer and Wieser behind.

Throughout the early stages of the descent, Mrufka was stronger and faster than Diemberger, and the equal of Bauer. But all three were in a hallucinatory trance. When Diemberger finally caught up to the other two, Bauer suddenly asked, “Do you have anything to eat? Have you brought a stove?”

“No, of course not,” Diemberger answered in astonishment. It is a testimony to the sheer will to live that the three survivors were able to keep descending over tricky ground, on a route unsecured by fixed ropes. Their thoughts were fixated on Camp III at 24,100 feet, where they expected to find tents still standing, perhaps with food and stoves and fuel still in them. Late that afternoon they reached the camp, only to find to their horror that ice avalanches had destroyed everything.

The only blessing was that fixed ropes had been strung continuously from camp to the lower slopes of the Abruzzi. But here a trivial technical detail worked its cruel mischief. Neither Bauer nor Diemberger had a descending device, so each man simply clipped in to the fixed ropes with a carabiner and went down hand over hand. Mrufka, however, had a Sticht plate, which she insisted on affixing to each rope. A Sticht plate is a good belay tool, but for rappelling, it’s far less easy to use than a figure-eight device. At each anchor, Mrufka had to fiddle arduously with her plate to disengage it from the upper rope and attach it to the lower one. Diemberger tried to persuade her to use a carabiner instead, but Mrufka either refused or didn’t understand.

As they forged on down into the darkness, the two Austrians lost track of Mrufka. They assumed she was just behind them, but they would never see her again.

Trailing behind Bauer, Diemberger could barely hold on to the fixed ropes. He half-fell, half-slid down the cords strung along the nearly vertical fissure of House’s Chimney. But at Camp II, he found Bauer in a tent, melting snow over a stove. The two men drank as much as they could, then fell asleep.

It was not until evening of August 11 that the two refugees completed their descent. The first person to greet Diemberger was Jim Curran, who of course hoped it would be Al Rouse emerging from the high death trap. According to Diemberger, Curran said, “You