Helicopters to scour Nanga Parbat for stranded climbers
KARACHI: What was supposed to be an attempt at history has turned into a nightmare with two foreign mountaineers stranded high on Nanga Parbat. A helicopter rescue is now expected to be attempted today (Saturday), local and foreign officials confirmed.
The rescue would be mounted after the Polish government intervened and the family of the climbers managed to raise the necessary money for the attempt. Polish climbers at K2 expected to join the effort.
French climber Elisabeth Revol and Polish climber Tomek Mackiewicz were attempting to scale the 8,126 metre Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world. Battling extreme temperatures and high winds, the two experienced climbers had managed to reach camp-IV on the mountain at a height of 7,300 metres earlier this week.
With weather expected to be good, the two had planned to push on to the summit and history on Thursday.
However, before they left the camp, communications were lost with the duo.
On Friday, word came that Mackiewicz was in critical condition while the duo was trapped at high altitude.
Janusz Majer, a Polish climber who is currently with a team of mountaineers from Poland currently attempting to make history of their own by attempting to become the first to scale K2 — the world’s second tallest mountain — in winter, wrote in a Facebook post that Revol and Mackiewicz got stuck at around 7,400 metres and had to spend the night there.
British mountaineer Masah Gordon, who is in touch with Revol’s family, later posted on Facebook that the French mountaineer had managed to bring Mackiewicz — who had suffered from snow blindness and frostbite and was in critical condition— down to at least 7238m on Friday morning. There were conflicting reports whether he was in a tent or not.
Revol, Gordon wrote, was continuing further down along the Kinshofer route to around 6670m — where she had last made contact with her team.
“The issue with her [Revol’s] descent is that she has no tent and is coming down the most direct route but the one they did not use on the way up,” Gordon said while referring to how there would not be any fixed ropes for them.
Rescue cost
As Revol and Mackiewicz families and teams became aware of the situation on the mountain, they contacted local authorities to mount a rescue. However, the authorities require an upfront payment for the rescue effort.
“The upfront rescue cost is estimated at $50,000,” Gordon wrote on GoFundMe page, set up to raise money for the rescue.
The target was soon crossed and around 56,000 euros had been raised within six hours.
Polish team off to conquer K2 in winter
Separately, the Polish government said that it had mobilized funds to rescue Mackiewicz.
“After receiving information about the terms of assistance provided by local entities, [Poland Foreign] Minister Jacek Czaputowicz — in agreement with the Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki — decided to immediately mobilise financial resources to cover transport costs as part of a rescue operation,” read a statement issued by the Polish foreign ministry on Friday.
It, however, noted that the maximum height helicopters can reach is 6,000 metres — after which point the air gets too thin to fly.
“It may be necessary for rescuers to climb up to the location where the Polish citizen is,” it said, as it added that some Polish mountaineers at K2 will be joining the rescue.
“The helicopters will go in the morning,” Alpine Federation of Pakistan Secretary Karrar Haidri confirmed to The Express Tribune on Friday, adding that there will be at least two helicopters which will be participating in the operation.
“If they are at a height greater than 5,000m, it becomes difficult for helicopters [to fly]. The helicopters start to wobble a lot,” he said, adding that that point the helicopters will not try to land and will try and “hook” them.
Coordinated attempt
The Polish mountaineers on K2, who were in base camp as per their rotation, will join the effort. A helicopter is expected to pick up four of them on Saturday morning before flying to the Nanga Parbat base camp in Diamer.
Majer said that Robert Szymczak, a high-altitude doctor and climber, will be among those joining the rescue attempt who will take food, equipment and oxygen to the stranded climbers. Other climbers expected to join them are Denis Urubko and Adam Bielecki.
Confirming the coordinated attempt, Haidri said that one of the challenges will be of ensuring enough rope.
“We will see if ropes are fixed or not,” he said.
Survival chances
Haidri was optimistic about the chances of the two climbers surviving even as he admitted that the weather was quite bad on the mountain.
“While there is less chance of an avalanche in winter, there is extreme weather to deal with such as extremely low temperatures and winds which can reach up to 100 km/h, which pose the biggest threat,” he said, adding that in extreme weather and with little supplies, climbers had a survival window of 30-40 hours.
“However, this is not the case here. The climbers have food,” he reassured.
Mackiewicz has been attempting to climb the 8,126m mountain for nearly eight years, Revol has been trying for nearly five. Each time, though, the mountain has thwarted them one way or the other.
It has been particularly frustrating for Mackiewicz who has on five different occasions climbed to over 7,000m on the mountain, the highest point he reached being 7,800m – just over 300m short of the summit.
Last June, Spanish alpinist Alberto Zerain and Argentinian Mariano Galvan had gone went missing while attempting to summit the “Killer Mountain”. A search was launched for them but it was believed that they had been buried under an avalanche.
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Original news : https://tribune.com.pk/story/1619323/1-helicopters-scour-nanga-parbat-stranded-climbers/