Emergency in the mountains

We arrived at Lago Antacoche, Peru, in the late morning. The place is stunningly beautiful and the sun was beaming down. We were camped right down on the side of this pristine(!) lake with the climbing mountain right behind it and snow capped peaks in the distance. Four of our group headed off to climb a multipitch route whilst the rest of us decided to just chill the afternoon away. I describe the lake with a (!) because it looks crystal clear and screams at you to come and swim, however we had been warned that the waters are contaminated with arsenic and cyanide from nearby mining in the past. I couldn't resist a quick dip though.

All went well for several hours, but then some clouds from the distant snow capped peaks drifted into our blue skies.
It wasn't long until the wind picked up, we heard some distant thunder, and then we were bang in the middle of a hail storm with temperatures plummeting. We could see the four people on the wall, three pitches up and only wearing summer clothes. We knew they would be cold, but that it shouldn't take them too long to get down. An hour later, they hadn't moved and it was beginning to get dark. We later found out that their rope had got stuck and one of them had to climb up a wet rope with frozen hands to try to free it. Once free they still had to abseil down the rest of the route. They eventually made it down - all four were soaking and shivering, the girl who had climbed back up the rope was hypothermic. What was brilliant about this experience is how everybody in our group jumped in to action to help these four. We were fairly impotent whilst they were still on the wall - we couldn't help get them down, frustratingly, they had to do that for themselves. But as soon as they were down, we brought them warm and dry clothes, stuffed the girl inside a sleeping bag with another girl and some hot water bottles, we supplied hot water constantly, and hot food as soon as possible. Every single person did something to help - that was fantastic to see and to be a part of.