Storm kills nine climbers on remote Nepali mountain
NINE climbers, including one of the world’s best, died in Nepal’s worst mountaineering disaster in recent years when a storm swept their camp away.
It took rescuers two days to recover the battered bodies.
Local police chief Bir Bahadur Budamagar said a group of villagers reached the climbers’ camp site on Saturday on Gurja Himal, a mountain in the shadow of Dhaulagiri, the world’s seventh-highest peak and a day’s walk from the nearest village.
The climbers included Kim Chang-ho, the first South Korean to scale all 14 Himalayan peaks over 8,000 metres without using oxygen bottles, who was leading the expedition with four other South Koreans and four Nepalese guides.
Technically difficult and remote, the mountain has not been scaled in eight years.
The damage to the climbers’ bodies, including broken limbs and smashed skulls, indicated a violent wind carrying chunks of ice swept them away from their camp site, Mr Budamagar said.
The bodies were found spread in a one-mile radius.
“The battered pieces and tents and other equipment were scattered even further away,” Mr Budamagar said.
Only 30 climbers have ever reached the peak of the 7,193-metre (23,590foot) Gurja Himal.
Nepal offers hundreds of mountains to climb, and mountaineers generally choose those where the routes and conditions are well known.
Many climbers are discouraged from the mountain at least in part because of a legal requirement to have at least three trained Nepalese guides along to receive a permit, Mr Thapa said.
More adventurous climbers would be drawn to a mountain like Gurja, said Jiban Ghimire, who organises expeditions for the Kathmandu-based company Shangrila Nepal Trek.
“These people like to go to mountains which are not crowded and there are no commercially organised expeditions of big groups. On the bad side, they are also far from getting help when in trouble,” Mr Ghimire said.
The bodies of Mr Kim and the four other South Koreans who were killed will arrive in in their country tomorrow.
Rescuers retrieved the climbers’ bodies on Sunday after the weather cleared.
The body of one of the guides was taken to his village, while the eight others were flown to Kathmandu.