The body of 28-year-old Saint Htet, who tragically fell to her death last month only minutes after summiting Kachin State’s Mount Phangran, has been recovered.
Rescue operations funded by the young climber’s family were able to locate and retrieve her body on Saturday, the Facebook page of the Myanmar Hiking and Mountaineering Federation (MHMF) revealed yesterday.
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Her body is now being held at Putao Hospital in Kachin, her father, Maung Maung Lay, told Coconuts Yangon in an interview today.
“We are trying to get to Putao to see her, but it’s difficult to arrange plane tickets at the last minute. We were still hoping that she would be alive, but I am in grief,” he said.
“Everytime I wake up, I am thinking of her.”
Her body is expected to be cremated in Putao, according to an update by the Ministry of Information.
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The first coordinated search effort led by local mountain guides and a 15-member rescue committee formed by the MHMF began on April 26 and concluded on May 8. That search produced only Saint Htet’s jacket, sunglasses, and eating utensils, MHMF vice chairman U Kyin Oo told the Burmese-language edition of the Myanmar Times yesterday.
On May 18, they began searching again, this time with an eight-member rescue team, and finally found her body on May 24. They notified her family shortly thereafter.
Saint Htet was part of a mountaineering group that climbed to the peak of the 4,300-meter-high mountain with 20 other trekkers and three guides on April 12.
The group was the first ever to plant Myanmar’s flag atop the mountain. Shortly after marking the occasion by taking pictures at the summit, the group began to make their way slowly back down the mountain. According to organizer Zaw Khine, Saint Htet slipped and fell almost 600 meters from the side of a cliff shortly after the return journey began.
In a Facebook post that has since been deleted, Zaw Khine explained that inclement weather conditions and a lack of proper equipment made attempting to recover her that day impossible.
