In a tragic incident, a hiker who was popular as a ‘Bikini Climber’ for scaling summits while scantily clad has been found frozen to death on the side of a mountain in Taiwan after suffering a bad fall during her latest challenge.
Gigi Wu, 36, had a passion for climbing ascended many of Taiwan’s tallest mountains and she captured a legion of followers on social media for her saucy snaps taken from their peaks.
Wu spent nearly 130 days climbing last year but all that experience couldn’t help her when she ran into trouble while hiking in Taiwan’s Yushan National Park last week.
According to reports, Wu set out on a solo hike on January 11. On Saturday, after eight days trekking, she made a distress call to a friend after falling more than 20 meters into a ravine. She told her friend that she was trapped in the ravine as her injuries left her unable to move.
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Commander Lin Cheng-I, of the Nantou County Fire Department, was quoted in reports saying that Wu activated her distress beacon at an altitude of 1,700 meters (5,577 feet) above sea level, where night-time temperatures reach 2 degrees Celsius.
The Taiwanese National Airborne Service Corps quickly scrambled a rescue team to the national park in a desperate bid to help the stricken climber.
However, bad weather had rolled in and it played havoc with the rescue effort. On three occasions a rescue helicopter had to abandon the mission due to the adverse conditions, Taiwan News reports.
When those efforts failed, the local fire department sent in two search and rescue parties on foot to search for Wu. After a lengthy trek, Wu’s body was found at the location of her distress beacon 28 hours later.