KATHMANDU: Rescue teams on Pakistan's Broad Peak located six additional climbers by drone late on Friday, a day after an avalanche swept away a 10-member climbing team that included Nirmal Purja, the Nepali mountaineer known as "Nimsdai".
The discovery brings to nine the number of climbers who have either been found or sighted more than 30 hours after Thursday morning's avalanche, although Pakistani authorities had not released full identifications by Friday evening. The condition of the 10th climber remained unknown.
Three bodies had already been recovered earlier on Friday through a ground and helicopter operation: Nepali climber Pur Bahadur Gurung, Omani climber Nadhira Al Harthy, who was found intact, and a single leg belonging to American climber Mallory Geis. The six additional climbers located by drone late on Friday afternoon had not been identified as of late Friday evening.
Among those whose status remains unknown is Purja, one of the most recognisable figures in modern mountaineering, who completed his self-described Project Possible in 2019. He climbed all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks in six months and six days, shattering the previous record by more than seven years.
The avalanche struck Purja and his team at about 9am on Thursday at an altitude of roughly 6,600 metres, between Camp 2 and Camp 3, as they pushed towards the summit of the 8,051-metre peak, the world's 12th-highest mountain, in Pakistan's Karakoram range.
The climbers included six Nepalis and four foreign climbers from several expedition outfits: three from Seven Summit Treks, three from Purja's own team, two from Imagine Nepal, and one each from Pakistan and the United States, according to Thaneshwar Guragain, Seven Summit Treks' general manager. The climbers had radioed base camp that morning to say they were heading up. No alarm was raised until the evening, when the team remained out of contact.
The first indication that something had gone wrong came from GPS tracking data, according to Changdawa Sherpa, an expedition leader with Seven Summit Treks who has been coordinating the search from Pakistan.
"The GPS track showed people coming straight down from above 7,000 metres," he told the Post. "That's when I understood the situation wasn't good."
A tracking device carried by Purja continued to show movement until Friday morning. His location appeared to shift downhill immediately after the avalanche.
By the time Changdawa was alerted, at around 9pm on Thursday, it was too dark to mount a rescue operation. Search teams resumed at first light on Friday, with a Nepali guide and local Pakistani staff hiking roughly 90 minutes from base camp to reach the site, where they recovered the first two bodies by mid-morning. A Pakistani Army helicopter later ferried the bodies to a hospital.
Rescue operations in Pakistan have moved more slowly than they typically would in Nepal, Guragain said, as they are run mainly by the military rather than through the immediate private helicopter response available in Nepal. Helicopters on Broad Peak are limited and subject to lengthy clearance procedures, meaning an effective rescue could not proceed until weather conditions improved. Asked about the chances of finding the missing climbers alive, Guragain said hope was fading rapidly.
The search stalled through the middle of the day as poor visibility hampered aerial operations. It resumed in the afternoon when a Chinese climbing team on a nearby K2 expedition, led by Mingma G Sherpa of Imagine Nepal, flew a drone over the debris field. Within hours, the drone had located six more climbers — four in a rough line and two nearby, according to Changdawa, who said he was able to identify two Sherpas from his company by their clothing in the drone footage.
Recovering the climbers spotted by the drone will likely require rescuers to be lowered from a helicopter on a long line, a high-risk operation given the terrain and limited infrastructure on the mountain. Unlike Mount Everest, Broad Peak has no permanent camps or communication relays above base camp, slowing both the search and the flow of reliable information, Changdawa said.
"It's not like Everest," he said. "Communication out there is very limited."
Pakistani authorities deployed army personnel, helicopters, drones and ground crews to the mountain from Friday morning, while Nepal's government said its Foreign Ministry, tourism authorities and embassy in Islamabad were coordinating with Pakistani counterparts.
The Alpine Club of Pakistan, in a statement, described the initial reports of the avalanche as "deeply concerning" and said the governments of Nepal and Pakistan were working together to support the search and rescue operation.
Seven Summit Treks has since called off its remaining expeditions on both Broad Peak and K2.
"It wouldn't be right to take on further risk after an accident this large," Changdawa said.
Additional Sherpas were expected to gather at Broad Peak on Saturday to assist local teams with the recovery operation. Changdawa said avalanche fatalities on Broad Peak had historically involved one or two climbers at a time.
"Losing an entire team like this at once — this is the first time we've seen anything like it," he said.- The Kathmandu Post/ANN
