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Pakistan climbing season reaches new heights as 1,400 foreign mountaineers arrive

In this picture taken on August 12, 2019 foreign tourists and porters rest at a camping site above Baltoro glacier in the Karakoram range of Pakistan's mountain northern Gilgit region. (AFP/File)
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Updated 06 July 2022
AFP
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Pakistan climbing season reaches new heights as 1,400 foreign mountaineers arrive

  • The country is home to five of the world’s 14 mountains higher than 8,000 meters
  • 57 expeditions planned for 23 Pakistan peaks this season, with 370 climbers climbing K2
Updated 06 July 2022
AFP

SKARDU: Pakistan is enjoying a bumper climbing season with around 1,400 foreign mountaineers bidding to scale its lofty peaks — including hundreds on the 8,611-meter (28,251-feet) K2, the world’s second-highest.

The country is home to five of the world’s 14 mountains higher than 8,000 meters, and climbing them all is considered the ultimate achievement of any mountaineer.
“It is a record number,” Raja Nasir Ali Khan, tourism minister of Gilgit-Baltistan region, told AFP about the number of foreign climbers this year.
Karrar Haidri, secretary of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, told AFP there were 57 expeditions planned for 23 Pakistan peaks this season — with 370 climbers having a crack at K2, known as “the savage mountain.”
Besides being far more technically difficult to climb than Everest, weather conditions are notoriously fickle on K2, which has only being scaled by 425 people since 1954.
More than 6,000 people have climbed Everest since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached the top in 1953 — some of them multiple times.
Haidri said climbers this year include 90 women — including at least two Pakistanis aiming to become the country’s first to scale K2.
Russian Oxana Morneva is leading a team on the mountain, having failed in her own attempt in 2012 when she was forced back after injuring her knee.
“My rope was broken by falling rocks,” she told AFP.
She said she had no apprehension about returning.
“When we go to the mountain we have to be peaceful inside, and we have to know what we are doing,” she added.
Around 200 climbers will attempt to scale the 8,051-meter Broad Peak, while similar numbers will try Gasherbrum-I (8,080 meters) and Gasherbrum-II (8,035 meters).
A 36-year-old Norwegian climber, Kristin Harila, is also aiming to reach the world’s 14 highest mountain summits in record time.
Having already climbed seven peaks of over 8,000 meters, Harila hopes to match, if not beat, Nepali adventurer Nirmal Purja’s ambitious six months and six days record.
The summer climbing season that started in early June lasts until late August.

Topics: Pakistan Climbing

Pakistan says over 44.3 million children vaccinated as year’s first anti-polio drive concludes

Updated 4 sec ago
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Pakistan says over 44.3 million children vaccinated as year’s first anti-polio drive concludes

  • Pakistan launched this year’s first week-long anti-polio nationwide campaign on Feb. 2, targeting over 45 million children
  • Pakistan’s attempts to eliminate polio have been hindered in past by militant attacks targeting polio workers, security teams 
Updated 4 sec ago
NAIMAT KHAN

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani health authorities have vaccinated over 44.3 million children during the week-long anti-polio nationwide campaign, the first of this year which concluded last week, the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said on Monday. 

Pakistan launched the first anti-polio nationwide campaign on Feb. 2 to target over 45 million children. Over 400,000 trained polio workers took part in the door-to-door campaign to vaccinate children under the age of five against the disease, the government said. 

“More than 44.3 million children were administered polio vaccine drops during the campaign,” the NEOC said in a statement. 

The anti-polio campaign, which concluded on Sunday, saw over 22.9 million vaccinated in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province. In Sindh, over 10.5 million children were vaccinated, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 7.13 million, in Balochistan 2.36 million, in Islamabad over 455,000, in Gilgit-Baltistan over 261,000 and in Azad Kashmir over 673,000 in seven days, data shared by the NEOC said. 

The center said that the campaign was conducted in Pakistan and Afghanistan simultaneously, the only two countries were the disease remains endemic. 

Last year, Pakistan reported 31 polio cases, a significant drop from the alarming 74 cases reported in the country in 2024. The South Asian nation reported six cases in 2023 and only one in 2021, but saw a sharp resurgence in 2024.

Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994, but efforts to eradicate the virus have been repeatedly undermined by vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners who claim that immunization is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western espionage.

Militant groups have also frequently targeted polio vaccination teams and the security personnel assigned to protect them, often resulting in deadly attacks, particularly in KP and Balochistan.

“Polio workers and security personnel who performed duties during the campaign are the nation’s true heroes,” the NEOC said. 

Topics: Pakistan Polio

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