Husband-and-wife mountaineering team Romano Benet and Nives Meroi were attempting a winter ascent of the world's fifth-highest mountain, Makalu, when things went badly wrong. It was the first of two serious challenges that could have brought their climbing careers, and even their lives, to an end.
The biggest problem on Makalu was the freezing wind.
Considered one of the most difficult mountains in the world to climb, in early 2008 a relentless gale was making it almost impossible.
Two years before, French mountaineer Jean-Christophe Lafaillle had died trying to make a winter ascent. But Benet and Meroi, and their fellow Italian Luca Vuerich, had not yet given up hope of success.
The wind continued to howl while I heard the sharp sound of my bone snapping
Nives Meroi
"For a month the gusts knocked us from here to there, and we couldn't even sleep at night," Meroi remembers.
Despite everything, the trio reached 7,000m (22,966 ft) - about 1,500m below the summit - and decided to hang on, hoping that the wind would die down.
"Instead, the jet stream exploded in a furious crescendo," Meroi says.
"We were running for our lives, when a gust of wind picked me up.
"My feet lost their grip on the gravel, I slipped between two big boulders and I fell, with my body twisting on my trapped foot.
"The wind continued to howl while I heard the sharp sound of my bone snapping."
With a broken leg, she could not move unaided.
The biggest problem on Makalu was the freezing wind.
Considered one of the most difficult mountains in the world to climb, in early 2008 a relentless gale was making it almost impossible.
Two years before, French mountaineer Jean-Christophe Lafaillle had died trying to make a winter ascent. But Benet and Meroi, and their fellow Italian Luca Vuerich, had not yet given up hope of success.
The wind continued to howl while I heard the sharp sound of my bone snapping
Nives Meroi
"For a month the gusts knocked us from here to there, and we couldn't even sleep at night," Meroi remembers.
Despite everything, the trio reached 7,000m (22,966 ft) - about 1,500m below the summit - and decided to hang on, hoping that the wind would die down.
"Instead, the jet stream exploded in a furious crescendo," Meroi says.
"We were running for our lives, when a gust of wind picked me up.
"My feet lost their grip on the gravel, I slipped between two big boulders and I fell, with my body twisting on my trapped foot.
"The wind continued to howl while I heard the sharp sound of my bone snapping."
With a broken leg, she could not move unaided.
So for two days Benet and Vuerich took turns to carry her on their shoulders. They walked through fog and along a glacier to reach Camp Hillary at 4,860m (16,000ft) where a rescue helicopter was able to pick them up and fly them to Kathmandu.
"Despite 40 years of climbing we still fear the mountains," Meroi says.
The following year, when Meroi's leg had healed, the couple to set out to climb Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain, which straddles India and Nepal. They were closing in on the 8,586m summit when Benet felt unwell.
"I was tired and slower than usual so I decided to stop, but I told Nives to continue," he says.
If Meroi had climbed the remaining few hundred metres to the summit, she would have stood a good chance of becoming the first woman to climb all of the world's 14 peaks above 8,000m (26,247ft). But she didn't think twice about turning round.
"When I realised there was something wrong with Romano I decided to descend as fast as we could," she says.
"I thought, 'What's the point of me going up there alone?' If Romano had waited in the tent at 7,600m while I was trying to climb to the top I might not have found him alive when I came
Benet was eventually diagnosed with aplastic anaemia, a very rare and potentially life-threatening condition in which your bone marrow fails to produce enough new blood cells.
The couple refer to this as their 15th eight-thousander, and the most difficult one.
"If it wasn't for the difficult situations that we had experienced in the mountains, I don't think I would be able to bear all this," Benet used to tell Meroi during the months of his illness.
He was to undergo nearly two years of treatment, including dozens of blood transfusions.
"Mountaineering is about facing one problem at a time, and about knowing that every step forward is a step we'll have to take coming back down," Meroi says.
"We like to think that climbing mountains gave us the skills to face the disease. It taught us to place one step after the other, to be patient, and to never give up."
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