On Monday morning, officials resumed a search for three experienced climbers who lost contact with the base camp during a winter climb of K2, the second highest mountain in the world.
The celebrated Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara and his two companions, John Snorri from Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr from Chile, lost contact with the base camp late Friday and were reported missing on Saturday after their support team stopped receiving reports from them during their ascent. .
K2, in the Karakoram range, is 8,611 meters (28,250 feet) high and one of the most dangerous climbs in the world, sometimes called ‘killer mountain’. Last month, a team of ten Nepalese climbers became the first to climb to its summit in the winter.
Karrar Haideri, an official of the Alpine Club in Pakistan, said: ‘The base camp did not receive any signals from Sadpara and his foreign companions after 8,000 meters … There is a search and let us pray for their safe return home then.’
The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a statement saying that the Icelandic Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gudlaugur Thórdarson, has spoken by telephone with his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Qureshi assured him that Pakistan would spare no effort in the search for the missing mountaineers.
Sadpara and his team left base camp on February 3, a month after their first attempt to scale down the mountain failed due to weather conditions.
Although Mount Everest is 237 meters higher, K2 is much further north, according to northern mountaineering experts, and subject to worse weather conditions. They say a winter climb is particularly dangerous due to the unpredictable and rapid changes in weather conditions.
Winter winds on K2 can blow with more than 125 km / h and temperatures can drop to -60C. In one of the deadliest accidents on the mountain climb, 11 climbers died in one day in K2 in 2008.
Haideri said Sadpara’s son, Sajid, had safely returned to base camp after his oxygen regulator failed at 8,000 meters. He was on board the rescue helicopter on Sunday.
Haideri marks Sadpara’s experience as a mountaineer who has climbed the world’s eight highest mountains.