Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Two alpinists, a Spaniard and an Argentinian, have gone missing during their attempt to climb Nanga Parbat peak, mountaineering experts announced on Tuesday. They were identified as Alberto Zerain, a Spanish national, and Mariano Galvan, an Argentinian national. The duo had left the base camp on June 19 but they remained holed up in their tent for three days at an altitude of 6,100 metres (20,000 feet) due to bad weather, said Muhammad Iqbal, owner of Summit Karakorum, the tour operating company that had arranged the climb. “They pushed for the summit again as the weather got better but lost contact with our staff at the base camp on Friday,” he said. “Our men on the mountain estimate the climbers location to be somewhere above 7,000 metres. It is impossible to climb and search for them at that altitude so we have requested a search and rescue helicopter, which will start its mission either today or tomorrow depending on weather conditions,” he said. At 8,125 metres, Nanga Parbat earned its grisly nickname – Killer Mountain – after more than 30 climbers died trying to conquer it before the first successful mission in 1953. In 2013, gunmen shot dead 10 foreign climbers and their Pakistani guide at the Nanga Parbat base camp. Those who died included an American with dual Chinese citizenship, two Chinese, three Ukrainians, two Slovakians, a Lithuanian and a Nepalese. Northern areas of Pakistan are home to some of the tallest mountains in the world, including K2 – the world’s second highest peak at 8,611 metres. Nestled between the western end of the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush mountains and the Karakoram range, the Gilgit-Baltistan region 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.

Published in Daily Times, June 29th, 2017.