Zhang Jingchuan Escapes Taliban Massacre

In June 2013, Chinese mountaineer Zhang Jingchuan was at the 13,000-foot base camp of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan's Himalayas when Taliban-linked gunmen rounded up foreign climbers and began executing them. After a bullet grazed his head, Zhang knocked an attacker aside and sprinted barefoot through the darkness in only his thermal underwear before jumping into a ravine, where he hid for about an hour. He then crept back into camp, retrieved boots, a jacket, an ice axe, and an undamaged satellite phone, and climbed to safer ground before calling a local emergency number. A Pakistani military helicopter arrived at first light, roughly nine hours after an attack that killed 11 other men.

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