The Pakistani authorities on Thursday declared the three mountaineers who disappeared in K2 dead 13 days earlier and ended the rescue operations, already paralyzed by bad weather.
The secretary of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, Karrar Haidri, told Efe that the authorities consider that the Chilean Juan Pablo Mohr, the Icelandic John Snorri and the Pakistani Ali Sadpara died on the second highest mountain in the world, with 28,251 feet high.
Gilgit-Baltistan Tourism Minister Raja Nasir Ali Khan and the son of the Pakistani climber, Sajid Sadpara, announced the end of rescue operations at a press conference in the town of Skardu.
“It is impossible to live more than a few hours where you are supposed to have had an accident,” Sajid said at the news conference.
The three climbers disappeared on Friday the 5th of this month when they were trying to summit K2 and since then they have not been heard from.
The day after his disappearance a rescue operation with army helicopters was launched, an initiative that was paralyzed on Monday due to bad weather and could not be resumed due to bad weather conditions.
Still, the military used an F-16 fighter to take pictures at K2 looking for clues to the whereabouts of the climbers.
Mohr, John Snorri and Sadpara join Spaniard Sergi Mingote, who died in January after an accident, and Bulgarian mountaineer Atanas Georgiev Skatov, who died after a fall this month on K2.
K2, an icy near-perfect pyramid, is known as “the wild mountain” because of how difficult it is to climb and because of winter weather conditions that can reach -58 degrees Fahrenheit and winds of 56 miles per hour.
Mount Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily, continued to erupt this Thursday, February 18. Residents of a nearby town said the volcano threw debris into their streets; at the moment no deaths or injuries were reported.
So far only 377 climbers have reached the second highest peak in the world and 88 have died trying since the Italian Achille Compagnoni achieved the first ascent in 1954.
K2 was the only one of the 14 eight-thousand that had not been crowned in winter, something considered the last great challenge of the discipline, which was achieved this year.
On January 16, 10 Nepalese mountaineers were rewriting history by jointly achieving the first winter summit of K2, “shoulder to shoulder.”
The ten climbers who achieved the milestone are Nirmal Purja, Mingma David Sherpa, Mingma Tenzing Sherpa, Geljen Sherpa, Pem Chiri Sherpa, Dawa Tempba Sherpa, Mingma G, Dawa Tenjin Sherpa, Kili Pemba Sherpa, and Sona Sherpa.