She Survived a Night Above 6,500 Metres on Peru's Highest Mountain. Her Climbing Partner Did Not.
Japanese climbers Saki Terada and Chiaki Inada got caught in whiteout fog descending Nevado Huascarán's 6,768-metre summit in June 2025. One made it home with severe frostbite; the other didn't survive the night.
Saki Terada and Chiaki Inada summited Nevado Huascarán, Peru's highest mountain, together on June 23, 2025. By the early hours of the next morning, descending through fog so thick they could barely see each other, Inada had stopped moving. Terada made it home to Japan with frostbitten hands and feet. Her climbing partner didn't survive the night on the mountain.
Key facts
- Saki Terada, 36, and Chiaki Inada, 40, both Japanese, summited Huascarán (6,768m / 22,205 ft) on June 23, 2025 via the technical Escudo route
- Descending into whiteout fog, Inada was incapacitated by suspected hypothermia around 1:30am; both were stranded near 6,500–6,600m
- A rescue team reached the pair roughly 38 hours later, on June 25; Inada was confirmed dead at the scene
- Terada was evacuated by helicopter on June 26 from a refuge at 4,500m, treated for severe frostbite and dehydration
Peru's highest mountain, and the hardest part of any climb
Huascarán is the tallest peak in Peru and one of the highest in the Americas, and its south-face Escudo route is a serious technical objective, not a walk-up. Terada and Inada, both experienced alpinists, climbed it well enough to reach the top — this wasn't a first big mountain for either of them. What nearly killed both of them, and did kill one, was the descent: fog closed in, visibility collapsed, and somewhere above 6,500m — deep in the zone where the body can no longer recover from cold or exertion — Inada stopped being able to continue. The pair had no choice but to stay put through the night, at an altitude and temperature that punishes any prolonged stop, moving or not.
They were found only because Terada was able to trigger their satellite messenger. Peruvian police and mountain guides climbed to reach the pair on June 25 at around 3pm, roughly a day and a half after Inada first went down. Rescuers confirmed Inada had died of hypothermia; Terada was alive, conscious, and severely frostbitten, but the same weather and crevasse-riddled terrain that trapped them made a same-day evacuation impossible. She was brought down to a refuge hut at 4,500m and lifted out by helicopter the following afternoon, June 26, then transferred first to Víctor Ramos Guardia Hospital in Huaraz and on to Lima for further treatment.
What this means for anyone climbing above 6,000m
What this means for trekkers
Huascarán is a technical peak, not a trekking objective, but the pattern that nearly killed both climbers shows up everywhere in high-altitude climbing, including on the Himalayan peaks we guide: the summit is rarely the dangerous part, the descent is — we wrote about exactly this pattern on Everest, where far more climbers die coming down than going up. A satellite messenger, a fixed turnaround time regardless of how close the summit feels, and a guide empowered to call the descent early are what turn a bad-weather day into a survivable one instead of a fatal one. It's the same discipline our NMA-certified guides hold to on Island Peak, Mera Peak and Ama Dablam — all real 6,000m-plus objectives reachable through a properly licensed Nepal trekking agency, where the descent gets exactly as much respect as the summit push.
Source: ExplorersWeb; Japan Times, with additional reporting from ExplorersWeb, June 2025.
Cover photo: Warner Brenes Quesada via Pexels (Pexels License).
Source: ExplorersWeb / Japan Times
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