Polish climbers rescued French mountaineer Elisabeth Revol (pictured above, centre) from Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat on Sunday, after a dangerous, all-night climb, Reuters reported. Bad weather, however, has forced them to decide not to go further to find her climbing partner, Tomasz Mackiewicz, from Poland.

The rescuers ascended more than 1,000 metres up Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world, to reach Revol.

Revol and Mackiwiecz were on the Himalayan peak, at 7,400 metres, when Mackiewicz got frostbite and snow blindness on Friday. Revol helped him descend a few hundred metres and set up a tent. She then went further down to call for help using a satellite phone.

Three Polish climbers who were preparing for the first winter ascent of the nearby K2 mountain – the world’s second highest mountain – responded to the call to rescue them. Pakistan Army picked them up and took them to Nanga Parbat’s base camp, The Guardian reported.

Pakistani helicopters helped spot Revol on Saturday and directed the rescue team, comprising Russian climber Denis Urubko, and Polish climbers Adam Bielecki, Jaroslaw Botor and Piotrek Tomala, to her.

Revol is recovering in a hospital in Islamabad. Her friend, Ludovic Giambiasi thanked the rescue team in a post on Facebook, and called the decision to abandon the search for Mackiewicz “terrible and painful”.

“The rescue for Mackiewicz is unfortunately not possible,” The Guardian quoted him as saying. “The weather and altitude would put the life of the rescuers in extreme danger.”

A crowdfunding campaign had helped raise money to aid the rescue operation and support Mackiewicz’s wife and three children. “The mountains were his own world and his fulfilment,” Mackiewicz’s wife Anna Solska told Reuters.

Nanga Parbat is called the “Killer Mountain” because of the number of deaths of climbers over the years.