Daily Times

The Pakistan Army rescued two British mountaineers stranded on Ultar Sar Mountain located in Hunza valley after an avalanche hit their tent, a local police official said Sunday.

The injured mountaineers identified as Bruce Normand and Timothy Miller were airlifted to Gilgit, the Hunza assistant commissioner said.

“The body of Austrian mountaineer Christian Huber, who was killed in the incident, was also to Gilgit,” he further said.

Efforts were under way since Saturday to rescue the two British mountaineers and bring back Huber’s body after their tent was hit by an avalanche 5,900-metre up Ultar Sar Mountain.

An army helicopter could not carry out a rescue operation on Saturday due to bad weather on the 7,388-metre high Ultar Sar.

Northern Pakistan is a magnet for mountaineers and is home to some of the tallest mountains in the world, including K2 – at 8,611 metres, the world’s second highest peak, but often deemed a more challenging climb than the highest, Mount Everest.

Nestled between the western end of the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush mountains and the Karakoram range, Gilgit-Baltistan houses 18 of the world’s 50 highest peaks.

It is also home to three of the world’s seven longest glaciers outside the Polar Regions. Hundreds of its mountains have never been climbed.

Published in Daily Times, July 2^nd 2018.