ISLAMABAD: A 43-year-old Bulgarian mountaineer fell to his death while trying to summit K2, the world’s second tallest peak, his teammates announced on Friday.
The incident took place while Atanas Georgiev Skatov was trying to return to the base camp from Camp 3.
The Bulgarian climber fell down while “changing his safety from one rope to the other,” said a statement issued by his team members who added that “some errors occurred [during the process] and he fell down.”
“We had fixed the mountain with new ropes and they were not broken,” the statement continued.
Last month, a Spanish climber, Sergi Mingote, lost his life while trying to scale K2.
A Russian-American mountaineer, Alex Goldfarb, was also found dead on Jan 19 after falling from the world’s 12th highest mountain, Broad Peak, near K2.
“Three climbers were killed and four climbers of different countries injured during the K2 winter expedition,” Alpine Club General Secretary Karrar Haidri told Arab News on Friday.
“A three-member team, including John Snorri of Iceland and Muhammad Ali Sadpara of Pakistan, was scheduled to summit K2 today,” he added. “They went beyond 7,800 meters a couple of hours ago. However, we don’t have latest information on them since there is no update from the team.”
On January 16, a group of Nepalese climbers made history by summiting the world’s second tallest mountain in winter.
K2 is frequently described as “savage mountain” since a large number of climbers — 86 in all — lost their lives while trying to summit it.
The mountain straddles the Pakistan-China border.
While it is about two-and-a-half football fields shorter than Everest (8,848 meters), it is widely considered to be the toughest and most dangerous mountain to climb.
More than 300 climbers have scaled K2 in spring and summer. Italians Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli were the first to reach its summit in the summer of 1954.
