Pakistan: 9 feared dead after K-2 avalanche
Nine climbers trying to scale K2, the world’s second highest mountain, are feared dead and three other climbers are missing, an employee for a Pakistani tour company said Sunday.
K2: The second higest peak in the world.
Sultan Khan said about 22 climbers attempted to summit K2 — located in the Himalayas on the Pakistan-China border — on Friday evening.
As they crossed an area called the “bottleneck,” an ice fall destroyed their fixed lines and safety ropes, and they were not able to return to Camp 4 where they had set up, Khan said.
They were at a height of about 8.2 kilometers (5 miles), making it unlikely one would survive the elements, Kahn added.
K2 is the second highest mountain, but many climbers consider it more technically challenging than Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain.
The nine include a Norwegian, two Nepalese, one Serbian national, three Koreans, one Pakistani, and one Dutchman, Khan said. The three missing include two Pakistanis and one French citizen.
The blog of the Norit expedition referred to one of the climbers as “Dutch and Irish.” The Irish Independent newspaper reported that the Irishman, Gerard McDonnell, was “missing on K2 just hours after becoming the first Irish person to reach the summit of the world’s second highest mountain,” and that his family believed he may have died while descending K2.
The Norit blog said rescue actions were underway Sunday.
Due to conditions at the mountain and limited communication, the status of the climbers remained unclear, and blog postings were sketchy.
A posting Saturday on k2climb.net, which offered updates on the situation, said “Norit expedition leader Dutch Wilco Van Rooijen has incredibly survived 3 nights exposure on the high slopes of K2.”
In a “Recap” of what happened, the posting said that on Friday, Norwegian climbers and a French climber “reportedly summited” before Gerard and were coming down. “Around 17 people were reported in the summit party.
“On descent, a big piece of ice fell below the summit, taking a large part of the fixed lines with it. About 12 people, including Wilco, Gerard, Marco and Korean climbers got stuck either above the traverse or above the Bottleneck.”
The Web site listed some survivors and said the number of “unaccounted for climbers from the August 1 summit push ranges between 8-10.”
It was not immediately clear whether that number had changed Sunday.
The Web site AdventureStats.com, which tracks fatalities at K2, says 66 people have died on the mountain since 1939. The most recent fatalities listed were two in 2007