Pakistan resumes search for climbers amid fading hopes

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) – The Pakistan Army Monday launched a fresh aerial operation to find three climbers who went missing while attempting to summit the K-2 peak in the country's north as hopes for their survival fade, officials said.

The operation to locate the missing climbers -- Muhammad Ali Sadpara from Pakistan, John Snorri from Iceland and JP Mohr from Chile -- was suspended on Sunday due to inclement weather.

The three have not been contacted since they began their push to climb to the world's second highest peak from camp-3 at midnight between Thursday and Friday, according to Karrar Haidri, secretary of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, the country's official mountaineering federation.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, he also said visibility over the mountain is poor today as it is covered with clouds.

The trio was attempting to scale the mountain without oxygen support in winter to make history.

"Army and local rescuers including trained climbers are trying their hard to locate them, although chances of their survival are very slim. You can say, no chances," Haidri said, citing freezing temperatures as low as minus 65 degrees Celsius (minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit) flanked by strong winds.

"It's just a matter of time to officially declare them dead," he added.

Bulgarian alpinist Atanas Skatov, who was part of the expedition, died on Friday after he fell into a crevasse.

Sadpara's son Sajid Ali Sadpara, who joined the expedition but later abandoned due to equipment issues, has little hopes for the survival of his father and the other two climbers, too.

Talking to reporters on Sunday, he apprehended the trio probably met an accident while on their way back after summiting the 8,611-meter (28,251-foot) peak.

Chances of surviving the extremely cold weather conditions without proper gear for three days are "very low," he added.

Nonetheless, he said, an operation could be launched to retrieve their bodies.

Sadpara is the only Pakistani climber to have summited eight peaks measuring over 8,000 meters (26,246 feet) -- five in Pakistan and three in Nepal -- during his illustrious climbing career.

The daunting K2, also known as “savage mountain” due to its treacherous terrain, had never been scaled in winter until last month when a 10-member Nepali team summited the peak for the first time in history.

Some 300 mountaineers made it to the top before, but all of them took up the challenge in either the summer or spring seasons.

Even in relatively better weather conditions, 86 climbers lost their lives while they were trying to scale the mountain, which towers over Pakistan's Shigar district of the scenic Gilgit-Baltistan region bordering China.