A man and a woman heaved a sigh of relief on Friday after they survived three cold nights lost on the nation’s second-highest peak, eating nothing but Mentos.
Chen Yu-chu (陳佑竹), 30, and Chang Yun-chien (張芸茜), 40, joined a man surnamed Liu (劉) to ascend the 3,886m tall Snow Mountain (雪山) on Monday as a way to celebrate the arrival of the New Year.
To get ready to conquer the summit on New Year’s Eve, the trio spent their first night in the 369 Cabin at an altitude of 3,690m in Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County’s Dahu Township (大湖).
However, after Liu suffered headaches the next morning, Chen and Chang decided to go up the mountain on their own.
After Chen and Chang failed to return to the cabin before midnight to count down to the New Year with Liu as planned, Liu immediately called the police.
Although Chen had many wildness survival experiences, the pair’s families were extremely worried, saying that Chang was an inexperienced climber and that they had packed lightly when heading to the summit on Tuesday.
The pair said after their rescue that were it not for the two lighters and two rolls of Mentos they had brought with them, they might not have survived.
“We went astray because of heavy fog when trying to reach the peak. As Chen’s GPS navigation device and radio transmitter were both out of batteries at the time, we decided to head down to the valley of the Cijiawan River [七家灣溪] first because the nighttime temperatures on the summit could drop to as low as minus-6°C,” the pair said.
Chen and Chang said that they used their lighters to start a fire out of tissue papers and dry branches they gathered to stay warm.
Since the Mentos were their only food, the pair decided to eat one mint only when they felt unbearably hungry.
They spent two long nights along the river before heading toward the mountain’s East Peak (東峰) on Thursday morning to try to find their way back to the cabin.
After spending another night in the woods, the pair eventually found the hiking trail and returned to the cabin.
The Taiwan Rock Rescue Association and the Greater Taichung Government’s Fire Bureau came to their rescue at about 2pm on Friday.
Chang burst into tears upon seeing the rescuers, saying the three nights had been a living hell and that they had felt like they were on the brink of death.
The bureau said that the pair was weak, but stable, and rescuers escorted them down the mountain yesterday after staying one night at the cabin.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods