Your trusted source

Award-winning alpinist Kei Taniguchi was confirmed dead Tuesday a day after she went missing near a peak of the snowy Daisetsuzan volcanic group in Hokkaido, northern Japan, police said, according to scmp.com.

Taniguchi, the first woman to win the prestigious Piolet d’Or (Golden Ice Axe) mountaineering award in 2009, was taken to a hospital after being found at 9:35 a.m. suffering cardiopulmonary arrest in a search involving the police, members of her climbing party and the Ground Self-Defence Force.

The 43-year-old left signs of having slipped and fallen after scaling 1,984-metre Mount Kuro in a party with four men, according to members of the group who raised the alert with police on Monday.

Taniguchi disappeared after detaching herself from a rope tied to other members in order to take a rest. Her peers then found traces of a slip and a pair of gloves believed to be hers on a nearby slope in fog, the police said.

Taniguchi scaled Mount Everest in 2007. She was “one of the world's most skilled female climbers,” the Japanese Alpine Club said.