ISLAMABAD/ GILGIT: A rescue operation was launched Saturday morning for three climbers who have not been in contact with base camp since Friday during a K2 winter summit attempt, according to a senior official of Pakistan’s Alpine Club.
Pakistan’s Ali Sadpara, Iceland's John Snorri and Chile's JP Mohr Prieto have been missing since Friday, though false news of their summit of K2 flooded social and mainstream media in Pakistan the same day.
“Rescue has started and army helicopters are engaged,” General Secretary of the Alpine Club, Karrar Haidri, told Arab News on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Sajid Sadpara, the fourth mountaineer on the expedition and Ali Sadpara’s son, who had begun an earlier descent due to his oxygen regulator malfunctioning, safely arrived at the base camp, announced Dawa Sherpa, a Nepalese mountaineer, in a Twitter post on Saturday evening.
A collage of Pakistan’s Ali Sadpara (L), Chile’s John Snorri (C) and Iceland’s JP Mohr Prieto (R).
The three missing mountaineers were last seen at the infamous K2 bottleneck by Sajid Sadpara at 10 am on Friday. He waited over 20 hours for his father and team members to reach Camp III, but there has been no sign of them.
Meanwhile, tales of Ali Sadpara’s heroism began surfacing.
“In case I’m stuck on the mountain, I can stay in a snow room and I can survive for a few days without food and other things,” Ali Sadpara told a close friend, Shamshad Hussain, in 2019.
“Ali is a mountain here,” Hussain, who runs a well known touring company in Skardu called Asia Trek and Tours, told Arab News on Saturday.
“He knew how to keep (alive) during the hardest things. We are praying for his safe return, we believe he is in safe hands,” he said.
On Saturday morning, Ali Sadpara’s management tweeted from his Twitter account:
“We are still waiting for Ali, John Snorri and JP Mohr to get in contact. While precautionary measures are being undertaken in case of a rescue being necessary. Last communication b/w sajid and base camp was at 01:00am and 04:00 am. Prayers.”
Dawa Sherpa mentioned on his Facebook page that an army helicopter made a search flight almost up to 7,000 meters before returning to Skardu since there was no trace of the missing climbers.
He added that weather condition was even getting poor at the base camp and it was not possible to continue with the search and rescue operation due to strong winds.
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 — have lost their lives trying to summit it.
On Friday, a 43-year-old Bulgarian mountaineer fell to his death while trying to summit K2, which is the world’s second tallest peak. It was the third death on K2 this season.
