Missing mountaineers: Concerns grow as bad weather keeps rescuers away

Official says there is still hope to recover the two men

ISLAMABAD/ KARACHI: Concerns are growing for two mountaineers missing on the Nanga Parbat after a helicopter sent to rescue them was forced to turn back early due to bad weather, an official said.

Spanish alpinist Alberto Zerain and Argentinian Mariano Galvan were part of a 13-man expedition to conquer the ninth highest mountain in the world. The duo had left base camp on June 19 but were holed up in their tent for three days above 6,100 metres (20,000 feet) on the Pico Mazeno ridge due to bad weather when contact was lost. The other 11 members of the expedition had returned to base camp safely.



It prompted their colleagues to launch a rescue attempt.

“A helicopter went today but it could not reach the climbers owing to the weather,” said Karrar Haidri of the Alpine Club of Pakistan. The club regulates all expeditions in the country.

He added that a ground team too had launched a search for the two climbers.

Meanwhile, Sebastian Alvaro, a journalist who has been following the climbers, confirmed that a helicopter flew past the mountain looking for the two missing climbers.

“The helicopter has arrived… but it has not been able to climb to the last point (indicated by the GPS tracker on the two mountaineers),” Alvaro wrote on microblogging site Twitter.

“No positive result on the helicopter flight over Nanga Parbat,” he added.

However, Haidri said there was still time to rescue the two men, giving them a 50-50 chance of surviving.

“Sometimes, they [mountaineers] can survive but in the event of food running out and extreme weather, survival appears unlikely,” he said.

However, if Zerain and Galvan can manage to climb down, Haidri said, their survival chances could increase.

Slovenian mountaineer Tomaz Humar, who too had been trapped on the Nanga Parbat at nearly 6,000 metres in 2005, had survived for six days before army helicopters found him trapped under a ledge.

Zerain is an accomplished climber having conquered two of the highest mountains in the world, Everest and K2, from two different sides each. He had also attempted to climb Nanga Parbat in 2011 from the same route but was forced to turn back due to an avalanche. Most recently, he had climbed Annapurna, the tenth highest peak in the world.



Galvan, too, has a number of 8,000-metre ascents under his belt having summited Everest without any supplemental oxygen or help from guides in 2012. He followed that with similar feats on Pakistan’s Gasherbrum I – eleventh highest mountain in the world, in 2013. He returned to conquer Broad Peak, the twelfth highest mountain in the world in 2015. He joined Zerain as they ascended Dhaulagiri in 2016.

WITH ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM REUTERS

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2017.