Ing. Eva Novotná

* 1937

  • "We were in a minibus, there are so many stops in small towns in South America. You go into little shops and tell them you need to get there and there, so they get you a driver to go with a couple of other people, and you pay. We had to have a lot of money exchanged. Well, so then we rode some little minibus. It was right in the book, you forget. My friend sat in the aisle, I sat at the window, probably in the second row. There were about 14 of us in the minibus. Suddenly, the minibus just somersaulted. So we stayed lying there, and I think there was one dead person, I don't know what nationality. I don't know. They loaded us both. Then some cars came, somebody arranged it. So, as we were lying there, they took us, each of us to a different car. They didn't even know that we belonged together. They took us to some hospitals, each of us to a different place. Jiřina was 200 kilometres away. We didn't know that at all. We didn't know anything."

  • "The second time we were there, we found a piece of fabric from a sleeping bag, a twisted lid of a mess tin. Then the snow and ice melted and there were only rocks left. Not that we could see that there had ever been a camp there, no."

  • "He slipped on that rocky path, and just as he was crossing the creek, I think it was something like that. He slipped and fell into the creek, he must have fallen on his head. Unfortunately. At that point - since he was one of the best climbers there, they wanted to climb a good wall - it came off. They decided to take the easier route to Huascarán, so they moved their camp. They packed up the camp and had it packed up and were just waiting for some Peruvians from down below to come and pick them up. And then there was an avalanche. They were packed up, everything, just waiting for the car to come get them. And the avalanche came. There was an earthquake. And the avalanche struck because of the earthquake."

  • "The fact is we've rolled over. We both stayed lying down, I had about thirteen fractures. Some vertebrae, some ribs, an arm, a leg, there was a lot. My friend too. After a month spent in a hospital in Chile, we knew nothing about each other or our backpacks. It all got scattered around. I was in some hospital, what was it called? My friend was in a town called Antofagasta and I don't even remember what town it was, I'd have to think back again. We didn't know about each other. They didn't know we belonged together, but in time they found out. But we were separated for a month, about 200 kilometres apart. Simply - when this happened there, they somehow called somebody and loaded us onto a jeep or something, they just threw us in the back seat, so with the fractures, even spinal ones, and everything, they didn't deal with that."

  • "We were scared - we had children at home - that we would get stuck there as well. That something could happen, and we would get stuck there too. So both on the plane and there, we only felt relieved after we landed at home in Ruzyně. How long were we there for? Well, not long, 14 days. Well, it must have been 14 days, because we flew to Lima via Africa, via Dakar, I think. And then taking buses from Lima, it takes two or three days to get there. That took a while, from Lima. Well, and then, the climbers from Lima or the locals took us in. Well, and we went up there to see it, so that was my first time there."

  • "Yes, they moved up to that second place and three of them climbed Huascarán the easier way, three of them climbed it. And then they decided they were going to get out of there already. At that point they were all at that base camp, they had basically everything packed up and were just waiting for some sort of a ride, they had some kind of a ride ordered, either by a car - there was probably a jeep or something like that that could get up there. Well, and then the earthquake came, and because of the earthquake, basically a piece of rock from the top of the mountain came down, and it took ice with it, and unfortunately, it flew right to where their camp was. So basically, they were all buried under this rock and ice avalanche."

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Under the Huascarán, she found a piece of the stocking she had knitted for her husband

Eva Novotná in the 1970s
Eva Novotná in the 1970s
zdroj: Witness archive

Eva Novotná, née Posejpalová, was born on 13 September 1937 in Krnov. After the occupation of the Sudetenland, her family had to leave, and in 1939, they settled in Pardubice. Here, she experienced the end of the war, the bombing of the city and the liberation. In 1946, they moved to Liberec, where she graduated from grammar school and also developed a relationship with hiking and climbing. She studied at the University of Chemical Technology (VŠCHT), where she met her husband Zdeněk Novotný. They married in 1963 and had two children. After school, she joined the glassworks in Josefův Důl. Her husband worked as an assistant professor at the University of Mechanical Engineering and Textiles (VŠST) in Liberec. In 1970, he perished along with other Czechoslovak climbers during an earthquake and avalanche under the Peruvian Huascarán. She repeatedly visited the site of the tragedy, and during one of her trips to South America she survived a microbus crash in the Chilean desert. From 1971, she taught chemistry at an industrial high school, and then at an elementary school. She regularly participated in the Jizerské Mountains 50 km cross-country skiing race, which became a memorial for the deceased Liberec climbers. In 2022, she lived in Josefův Důl.