Chakar The Great
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The rescue operation to locate three climbers, including Pakistan's Muhammad Ali Sadpara, who went missing while attempting to summit the world's second-highest mountain, K2, was suspended after it failed to locate the mountaineers for the second day on Sunday.
Sadpara, John Snorri from Iceland and MP Mohr from Chile have not been contacted since the three began their push for the K2 summit from camp 3 at midnight between Thursday and Friday, according to their team.
Several experts, including four local high altitude climbers, Fazal Ali and Jalal from Shimshal, Imtiaz Hussain and Akbar Ali from Skardu, Chhang Dawa Sherpa and other members of the SST winter expedition team, are part of the rescue mission.
Two army helicopters flew to their maximum limit of 7,800 metres for a second time and conducted aerial reconnaissance for an hour to locate the missing climbers. The search team traced the Abruzzi and other routes but did not see any signs of the mountaineers, according to Chhang Dawa Sherpa.
Sherpa said the operation was not successful due to cloudy conditions and strong winds, and was temporarily suspended.
An official of the expedition team earlier told Dawn that rescue teams were searching for the missing climbers by following the route they had taken towards the summit through helicopters. The search will continue until all three are located, he added.
Another official of the expedition said the rescue teams were trying hard to trace the mountaineers.
The search began on Saturday with aerial reconnaissance but the helicopters returned after worsening weather conditions made the search harder to continue, according to Chhang Dawa Sherpa.
Meanwhile, Sadpara's son, Sajid Sadpara, who was also part of the expedition, reached the K2 base camp on Saturday evening after waiting for the three climbers at camp 3 for over 20 hours. Sajid was with the three till 10am on Friday up until the bottleneck, the most dangerous area of the mountain, and had returned to camp 3 after facing issues with his oxygen regulator.
The three lost contact with base camp late on Friday and were reported missing on Saturday after their support team stopped receiving reports from them during their ascent of the 8,611-meter high K2 mountain.
"The base camp received no signals from Sadpara and his foreign companions after 8,000 meters [...] A search is on and let’s pray for their safe return home," Karrar Haideri, a top official with the Alpine Club of Pakistan, told The Associated Press.
On Saturday, choppers flew to a height of 7,000m to try to locate the missing mountaineers with no success.
News of the missing men comes a day after a Bulgarian mountaineer was confirmed to have died on K2.
At the time the three began their summit attempt, 18 members of one of the expedition teams decided to abandon their attempt and spent the night at camp 3, choosing instead to descend on Friday morning.
Earlier, it was reported that the three climbers had managed to summit K2, prompting congratulations from government officials, including the Gilgit-Baltistan governor and chief minister. However, no official statement has been released in this regard and it is currently unclear whether they managed to summit the peak on Friday or not.
Speaking to Dawn, an official from the expedition team said the only verified news was that the climbers had crossed the bottleneck which led many to assume that they had reached the summit.
The foreign ministry issued a statement saying Iceland’s foreign minister, Gudlaugur Thór Thórdarson, spoke to Shah Mehmood Qureshi by telephone. Qureshi assured him that Pakistan will spare no effort in the search for the missing mountaineers.
Haideri noted Sadpara’s experience as a mountaineer who has climbed the world’s eight highest mountains, including the highest, Mount Everest, and was attempting to climb K2 in winter.
K2 is the most prominent peak on the Pakistani side of the Himalayan range and the world’s second tallest after Mount Everest. Winter winds on K2 can blow at more than 200 kph and temperatures drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius.
A team of 10 Nepalese climbers made history on Jan 16 by scaling the K2 for the first time in winter.
