‘It’s a tragedy that should have been avoided’: Survivors of Patagonia blizzard disaster that killed British woman tell how officials’ ‘failures’ forced trekkers to become rescuers

Tom Player had never seen a dead body before Monday. 

High up on the desolate Chilean mountain, in the middle of a fierce and icy blizzard that pelted snow at him at 120mph, he found the unresponsive body of Julian Garcia Pimentel, from Mexico, lying on his front with his eyes wide open.

As a London-based composer, who had most recently worked on John Lewis‘ latest Christmas advertisement, with little first aid training, Tom certainly wasn’t prepared for what he witnessed on the freezing peak in Torres Del Paine. 

Nor was he prepared to mount an ad-hoc rescue mission to try and locate his friend, Victoria Bond, who had gone missing on their way back down from the mountain.  

Victoria, a 40-year-old woman from Cornwall who worked in PR, was tragically among the five people who perished on Monday after a snowstorm with winds of up to 120mph hit the Torres del Paine nature reserve, Chile’s most visited foreign tourist spot.

Her death, along with two German nationals and two from Mexico, came amid horrific weather that hit the Patagonian park – famed for its granite peaks, glaciers and wildlife – that plunged trekkers into a deluge of ice, snow and rain, worsened by the perilously high wind speeds. 

Multiple survivors of the Patagonia tragedy have alleged that failings by park authorities and managers of the campsites forced them to become their own rescuers and healers. 

They told the Daily Mail that despite the horrific conditions seen throughout the day, staff at the park, who appeared to be under-trained, told them it was safe to go up.

They also claim that park rangers with CONAF, the authority in charge of Chile’s parks, were not at the nearest campsite, where they may have been able to launch a professional rescue operation, and did not arrive for several hours after they were contacted. Survivors also said that a rescue operation was not launched until the following morning, due to the horrific weather conditions. 

And they told the Daily Mail that managers for Vertice, the company that runs campsites in Torres Del Paine, were allegedly obstructive in their efforts to care for survivors.

The Daily Mail has contacted both CONAF and Vertice for comment. CONAF said earlier this week that it will ‘review the safety and communication protocols in the park’s circuits together with the concessionaires, with the aim of strengthening prevention and emergency response capacity’ in light of the tragedy. 

Sources have also told the Daily Mail police are investigating the incident.  

But for people like Tom, this is too little, too late. He told the Mail: ‘There were so many failures on top of each other that led to this. It’s a tragedy that should have been avoided. 

‘They could have just said, “sorry, it’s closed today”, which they later did but only because they were dead bodies on there, not because they were worried about people’s safety.’

Multiple survivors said they were also told by staff that it was fine for them to go up, despite the weather conditions. 

Maeve, an experienced hiker and skier from California who was in Torres Del Paine told the Daily Mail: ‘These [staff] from Chile… did not suggest that we don’t go, we trusted them. We figured they were encouraging us to go.

‘We thought “it’ll be okay. It’ll be really challenging, but we’ll fine”.’

Tom said he was told the same thing: ‘We’d been shown the weather forecast at the Los Peros camp, which is managed by Vertice. And they said, “oh, it’s normal”.’

But the hike up was utterly perilous, and survivors say it was made worse by being told by staff it was fine to go up as they did not bring the proper equipment with them. 

Survivors said though they all started the hike at different times and as separate groups, they all coalesced into one to support each other going up in the horrific conditions.  

Maeve said: ‘Navigating was extremely difficult, which we were not warned about. They’re the worst winter conditions I’ve been out in. People were becoming hypothermic, a lot of people got frostnip and frostbite on their fingers. A lot of people did not have adequate equipment. Some people didn’t even have gloves on.

‘There was a real risk in stopping at all because as soon as we paused on the mountain, we started to lose our body heat very quickly. There was no way I could’ve taken my backpack off and put on another layer.’

Tom added: ‘I’ve been in windy situations before, but it’s quite hard to describe how forceful the wind was. You could not stand up. All of us are also carrying 15 kilo backpacks with everything on them, all our tents, our food for the week, our cooking apparatus, all our clothes, all our water.

‘The gusts were especially unpredictable. You can’t just kind of change your body position and lean into the wind. You have to almost crouch. Some of them were so strong that it knocked us completely over, and we had to crawl on all fours until the gust had passed.’

The decision was made to turn back, but going down brought its own troubles. 

Chris said: ‘Some people slid down the mountain. It was icy, really treacherous conditions, [with] really strong winds. People couldn’t see in front or behind [themselves].’

Chris said: ‘It was pretty terrifying. I slid down the mountain once at a very high speed and I couldn’t stop. It was just sheet ice.

‘I was just trying to dig my heels and poles in, but nothing was stopping me. I aimed for some rocks to try and break the speed.

‘I wasn’t wearing a helmet, so could have easily just flipped over. It was just about OK, just a few scratches. But it’s hard to breathe because the snow was so intense. 

‘You couldn’t see. You could barely see the person in front of you, especially going up, the wind and the snow was blowing into our eyes.

‘You just couldn’t look up. It was too painful. I wore glasses at one point, but they just got completely covered in ice. That didn’t really help either.’

He said others struggled going down as well, and were keenly aware of how wrong the descent could go: ‘I saw lots of people sliding at the very steep bit when it was icy.’

Tom said that after he came back down the mountain, he ran into the campsite and tried to find Victoria, as she had been separated from the group. 

‘I ran into the common room, and I shouted: “is Victoria here?” It was silent. I looked in all of the other rooms, and I realised that there was a real problem. 

‘I went to the reception. I said “we’ve got a missing person on the mountain. We can’t locate Victoria”.

He said that he was shocked by the campsite’s staff’s initial response.  

‘The staff didn’t react in the way I expected them to. They said, “oh, let me just finish this booking”. I was just kind of baffled by that.

‘I spoke to staff later and it’s quite clear that they weren’t trained. Some of them were very new on the job and they feel absolutely terrible about the situation.

‘I don’t want to make it sound like that it’s a personal failure on any of them, but a procedural failure.’

After guzzling an energy drink and a couple of energy bars, he and a staff member called Brayan mounted a search and rescue mission, despite having already spent multiple hours trekking up and down the perilous mountain in treacherous conditions. 

Taking equipment from campers, including bottles of hot water, sleeping bags and matts, he and Brayan rushed up the mountain to try and find Victoria: ‘I was looking for Victoria. That’s the only thing I had in my mind.’

The pair of them first came across Cristina, Julian’s wife who later died. 

‘She managed to kind of sit up and wave for help. She was very hypothermic, so we gave her a coat, we gave her hot water and we sat with her. She was getting cared for, and we didn’t need to both be with her, so I told Brayan that I was going to continue up on my own.’

Trekking up on his own, he found Julian. He said Cristina told him he may have had a head concussion and a broken knee. But Tom found him with his face down in the snow and his eyes wide open, completely unresponsive. 

‘I thought “do I know for sure he’s dead? Is there anything I can do?” I wrapped him up and I put down a camping mat to get him off the floor so he wasn’t losing body heat to the floor’, he said. 

‘But honestly, it didn’t help enough. I stopped and listened to his breath. He wasn’t breathing, he was completely unresponsive, and his eyes were open. And I thought, “I’ve got to carry on”.’

He found a second person while trekking up on his own. Thinking it was Victoria, he said he rushed up to meet them, though it did not turn out to be her.

Tom said: ‘She was slumped on the floor and I was able to make eye contact with her. I thought “here’s someone I might be able to save”.’

He said he took off one of his coats and gave it to her, before wrapping her up in a sleeping bag and trying to get her to drink warm water: ‘She couldn’t even open her mouth to gulp. It just fell out the sides of her mouth.’

After finally getting her to drink the warm water, he ran back down to the camp to pick up some additional gear to help her. He said he put her in another sleeping bag, and gave her an uninsulated bottle with hot water in it to warm her up further before he went up further to try and find Victoria. 

‘I thought “okay, I’ve done everything I can here. I need to carry on. I need to carry on and look for Victoria.”.’

But as he trudged through the biting cold, he came to the sudden realisation that he might die on the mountain if he wasn’t careful. He was forced to make a decision that likely haunt him for the rest of his life. 

Tom said: ‘I looked into the wind and I couldn’t see anything in this wall of 100mph snow coming at you. You couldn’t look where you’re going. There’s no visibility. I thought “I’ve got to turn back”. 

‘I was running on adrenaline. If I tripped and fell and hurt myself, no one was coming. It was such a difficult decision. I had to turn around, come down and try to get some help. I knew that she must still be up there somewhere.

‘My heart said: “You’ve got to go on, you’ve got to try”. My head said: “This insanely risky and dangerous and you could lose your life”.’

So he came back down, tragically without his friend: ‘I was done by then, I was so exhausted.’

But the troubles in Torres Del Paine were not over. Lydia Birch, an emergency doctor from Australia who had arrived in Chile on November 10 with her friend, was one of those forced to step up and save lives. 

After making her way up in treacherous conditions, she and her group somehow made it back to their base camp, where Lydia helped set up a treatment space. 

She said: ‘Our medical team was entirely comprised of international doctors, a paramedic and a nurse practitioner who were hiking the trail.’

At the treatment space, she saw ‘at least four head injuries’, frostbite and severe distress from those who went up. 

She added: ‘Two doctors joined the rescue teams to hike up to a woman with severe hypothermia, who suffered a cardiac arrest during her prolonged extrication over very difficult terrain in incredibly challenging blizzard conditions. 

‘These volunteer rescuers did an amazing job, while themselves already tired and cold, and largely not trained in this. Our team of eight doctors and a nurse practitioner continued the resuscitation when they arrived back to Los Peros, but sadly we could not revive her’.

She also accused managers at the camp she had set the treatment space up at of asking her and the other volunteers to purchase sleeping bags and gas, as well as food, though she added that they later changed their minds about this. 

But Lydia said they did ‘not being provided with medical kits in a timely fashion despite requests for this’.

She added: ‘They were eventually provided… but it was very difficult to work out what supplies they had, and we mostly relied on people’s personal kits, leaving them without first aid items for their subsequent journeys’.

Tom said he witnessed multiple survivors bodging rescue equipment together, including a stretcher that was made from hiking poles and gaffer tape.

Chris Aldridge, a TV and film director who was travelling with Tom and Victoria, said: ‘We built stretchers out of walking poles, tarpaulins and sleeping matts.’

Tom added: ‘We later found out there was a stretcher in a f***ing cupboard, but no one had the key.’

Lydia also claimed: ‘[The] manager tried to suggest people we were actively treating, with conditions including frostbite, hypothermia, monitoring post hypoglycaemic episode, and acute stress reactions, should leave the treatment area. 

‘[They] reluctantly agreed they could stay when I argued that my medical opinion was that they needed treatment. The manager was well aware of my credentials prior to this.’

Maeve said: ‘They were so unwilling to help, it was really confusing and genuinely really aggravating. As a human being, you expect that when you’re in a visibly vulnerable state that someone would have the heart to help you. That just wasn’t happening.’ 

Multiple survivors told the Daily Mail that CONAF rangers were nowhere to be found when they initially came down from the mountain. 

As a result, they said, formal rescue operations did not begin until Tuesday morning, as the conditions were too perilous and it was too dark for the rangers and army to go up. 

But they said that no one with the qualifications to mount a rescue mission actually arrived before late on Monday, which is why survivors were forced to launch their own operation. 

Maeve told the Mail: ‘There were no CONAF staff in the personnel station that is at the Los Peros campsite. There’s a ranger station, and it was not manned so no one was there to help us with our rescue efforts.’ 

Chris told the Daily Mail: ‘CONAF arrived after dark on Monday, and then couldn’t go up because it was dark. Then they didn’t even go up the next morning because the conditions were too bad. 

‘It was OK for them not to go up but it was okay for us to go up, which is weird.’

Those who made it out have told the Mail that they are now suffering from immense exhaustion and survivor guilt. 

Tom said: ‘All of us are having survivor guilt. We have this idea that everyone is going to be angry with us for not managing to help our friend, find her, come back with her safe. But we’re completely discounting how horrendous it was.

‘The guilt is really hard to deal with, honestly. If there’s anything that’s changed my perspective on it, it’s the fact that it could have been so much worse.’

This has all been made worse by the fact that survivors feel that the tragedy could have been avoided with proper procedures in place. 

They have called for an increased CONAF presence in the park, as well as a clear emergency plan and proper lines of communication to be implemented along with rigorous training procedures for all staff who work in Torres Del Paine. 

Lydia solemnly told the Mail: ‘What happened on that pass was a completely avoidable tragedy.’