Taken Hostage While Rock Climbing | Nat Geo Live

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About a week into our expedition

a rebel group from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

moved through the valley

and they saw us 1,000 feet up on this big wall

and they saw this as this opportunity.

And so, we awoke one morning

to bullets flying around our portaledges.

The message was quite clear.

We had to come down

or we would get shot.

So, we spent a couple hours rappelling to the ground.

And when we got to the ground, we were greeted with

these very scary-looking guys, with big guns

and army fatigues and large beards and…

We were taken hostage.

And, few hours after we were actually taken as hostages

the Kyrgyz Military moved into the valley

and this incredible battle erupted all around us.

We watched in horror as

a Kyrgyz shoul– soldier was shot point blank in the head.

And we were forced to lie on his body for like four hours

as this crazy battle raged around us.

Heavy machine gun fire, mortars were shot over our heads.

And then for the next six days we hid.

During the day we would bury ourselves in holes in the ground

cover ourselves up with brush and lay completely still.

At night we would sneak from one location to the next.

On the sixth night of captivity

something clicked inside of me

like, this real survival instinct kicked in.

I suddenly felt as though I’d be able to sprint uphill

without my heart rate even rising.

So, a plan was hatched for the head captor

to try and like head back to our basecamp and get some food.

And then we were told to climb up this steep mountainside

with our one remaining captor.

And so we started climbing

we were climbers, very comfortable on this terrain

our captor was not comfortable.

And I started to think if we didn’t get out of here soon

like, we might not last very much longer.

And so, when we were probably

a couple thousand feet up this mountainside

in a super exposed section of the climb…

I decided that I had to take matters into my own hands.

So, I scrambled up behind this one remaining captor

and I grabbed the gun strap

for the gun that was strapped over his shoulder

and I yanked backwards on it as hard as I could

and I watched him fall 50 feet, hit a sloping ramp and then

off into the blackness.