Bodies of 3 climbers who went missing while climbing K2 in Pak found after over 5 months

PTI, Jul 27, 2021, 8:20 AM IST

Islamabad: The bodies of three climbers, including Pakistan’s leading mountaineer Muhammad Ali Sadpara, were found on Monday, more than five month after they went missing while attempting to scale K2, the world’s second highest peak.

Sadpara, along with Iceland’s John Snorri and Chile’s Juan Pablo Mohr, had tried to scale K2 peak in winter from a different route when they went missing on February 5.

Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP) Secretary Karrar Haideri in a statement confirmed that the bodies of the three climbers were located and arrangements were being made to bring them down.

He said it was ”very difficult” to remove the bodies due to the high altitude but the Army Aviation was helping to bring them down.

Haideri said Snorri’s body would be shifted to Iceland at the request of his wife, Lina. Mohr’s sister and mother had also decided previously that his body would be brought back to Chile.

Earlier, Gilgit-Baltistan Information Minister Fatahullah Khan told Geo News, that the bodies were found by an expedition led by Sadpara’s son Sajid Sadpara, who was accompanied by Canadian filmmaker Elia Saikaly and Pasang Kaji Sherpa.

Separately, the minister told the Dawn online that all the bodies were spotted 400 metres away from the bottleneck spot at K2.

The three climbers went missing while attempting to climb K2, which is the world’s second-highest peak with 8,611 metres height but considered as the most difficult to climb.

After several days of search involving climbers and army aviation helicopters, the search was abandoned on February 18 when the three were declared as dead.

Sadpara was the only Pakistani mountaineer to have summited eight of the 14 highest peaks in the world above 8,000 metres.

Last winter, mountaineers Atanas Skatov and Sergi Mingote Moreno lost their lives while attempting to scale K2 during winter.