Scots filmmaker and team of climbers with spinal injuries tell of 18 hour rescue ordeal on Nepalese mountain

A Scots filmmaker has told how he and a group of people with spinal cord injuries were stuck on a Nepalese mountain for 18 hours in temperatures of -30 degrees after two of their team fell into a 10 metre crevasse.

Beetle Campbell, 26, from Edinburgh, embarked on the 17-day expedition to Nepal with the group, where they climbed to 6,900 metres, passing the previous world record of 6,000 metres for climbers with spinal injuries. But after reaching the summit of their climb, Mr Campbell saw their Nepalese guide plunge into a crevasse on the side of the mountain.

The incident is now to feature in a 40-minute documentary to be made about the trip, which raised funds for a spinal unit in Kathmandu with charity The Millimetres 2 Mountains Foundation.

Mr Campbell said most of the group was suffering from altitude sickness as they reached the top of their climb, just short of the 7,126m summit of Himalayan mountain Himlung Himal.

Edinburgh filmmaker Beetle Campbell is now in discussions about a documentary telling the story of the climb. Pic: Beetle Campbell

The trip was spearheaded by Ben Halms, who is paraplegic with no sensation in his right leg and foot following a parachute accident while serving in the Army and friend and incomplete quadriplegic, Ed Jackson, a former professional rugby player. The men, aged 33 and 34, from England, were joined by friend and trainer Arron Collins-Thomas, as well as Mr Campbell and a local guide.

"The other guys turned around a little bit before, they were struggling,” he said. “And as we were coming down, I was seeing purple sea urchins and being sick [due to altitude sickness]. Then, as we got back down, our guide disappeared through a crevasse, 10 metres down and injured his leg.”

With other members of the group, Mr Campbell spent the next five hours attempting to rescue both the guide and Mr Collins-Thomas. They were able to pull up Mr Collins-Thomas using a rope, but were unable to reach the guide. The group was then forced to wait for another 18 hours before being rescued by a helicopter the next morning.

Ben Halms and Ed Jackson, who both had spinal cord injuries, embarked on the climb with friend Arron Collins-Thomas.

He said: "We couldn’t really walk left, right, forward or back, because we didn't know where the crevasses were. We had to spend the night on the mountain at 6,000 metres in minus 30.

“We had a satellite phone and I had a radio, but helicopters don’t fly at night in Nepal. So we knew we were stuck there overnight and that was pretty scary. There was a couple of moments when we were in and out of sleep and consciousness, that we were trying not to get hypothermia.

"In the morning, when we heard the sound of the chopper, which was actually 18 hours later, we were all quite emotional. In hindsight, it made me go ‘crikey that was actually quite close’. But when we were up there, it wasn't really a case of thinking about that. It was more a case of ‘Right, let's crack on, how are we going to get through this?’”

Mr Campbell, who was asked to join the trip after being contacted by Mr Jackson on Instagram, had previously never climbed anything bigger than Ben Nevis.

Beetle Campbell just got back from Nepal

He said: “I haven't done anything like that before. I grew up in Loch Lomond and so I've been up and down hills there all my life and I've done lots of skiing. It was the highest I've climbed would have been Ben Nevis, which is about 1,100 metres, so there’s quite a difference.”

Mr Campbell is in discussions with Channel 4 and Universal Studios about the documentary.