Talk about head over heels: Bride survives 1,000-foot fall on her honeymoon
It’s one thing to fall head over heels in love with your partner, but it is a completely different thing to fall 1,000 feet on your honeymoon.
Magdalena Czarnecka, 29, was on her perfect honeymoon with her husband, Michael Wangrat, climbing in Alaska on the West Buttress route of Denali when she fell a terrifying 1,000 feet, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
The Polish couple are seasoned climbers and even have their own Facebook and Twitter pages documenting their journeys.
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The bride was roped with the groom’s cousin, Marek Paleski, at 17,000 feet when they both began to fall; Wangrat had stayed behind because he didn’t feel well.
The climbers were not always clipped into safety pickets found along the trail. Czarnecka said, “We were probably in between two of them and our rope was not long enough to do it. Maybe we felt too safe and too strong to clip in.”
The honeymoon was supposed to be a yearlong adventure, but just 10 days in, Czarnecka found herself waiting to be rescued after falling into a crevasse. The fall could have been fatal, according to authorities, and the crevasse likely saved their lives.
Czarnecka regained consciousness a half hour after the fall, and she and Paleski spent the night in the crevasse. He went for help the next day. When rescue crews were finally able to reach her, she was quickly airlifted to a hospital to undergo a four-hour surgery that included placing rods and a plate in her skull.
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Wangrat had been told to stay put, and he spent the night in his tent waiting to see a helicopter that would rescue his bride and his cousin.
Czarnecka says that this accident has proved that she married the right man. While their yearlong honeymoon was cut drastically short, Wangrat slept beside her in the hospital for the past two weeks in his sleeping bag on a fold-out chair.
She said that this has only made their relationship stronger.
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