Rescue operation to find Sadpara, other climbers enters third day amid harsh weather

(Karachi) The rescue operation by Pakistan Army to locate three climbers, including Pakistan’s Muhammad Ali Sadpara, who went missing while attempting to summit the world’s second-highest mountain K2 has entered the third day, local media reported on Monday.

As per details, Muhammad Ali Sadpara, John Snorri from Iceland and JP Mohr from Chile lost contact with the base camp on Friday and were reported missing on Saturday after their support team stopped receiving communications from them.

Later, a rescue mission was constituted to find the missing climbers that included local high altitude climbers Fazal Ali and Jalal from Shimshal, Imtiaz Hussain and Akbar Ali from Skardu, Romanian Alex Găvan, Nazir Sabir, Chhang Dawa Sherpa, and other members of the SST winter expedition team.

In a twitter message, Nepalese mountaineer Chhang Dawa Sherpa said that "Today we were able to make search flights all over by two Pak Army helicopters with the help of the Army Aviation 5 squadron," Dawa said in a statement on Twitter.

"Pilots, Lakpa Dendi and I went through the areas that we were aware of to locate the missing climbers. We had less visibility and the upper parts of the mountain are covered in clouds," he said.

"For the last three days, pilots made a great job, out of their limits but we can't find any clues there. The team is waiting for another permissible weather and search possibility," he added.

Earlier, the son of Ali Sadpara, Sajid Sadpara returned to the base camp after he was sent back from an altitude of 8,200 kilometers owing to a malfunction in his oxygen regulator.

Talking to the media after the end of second-day rescue mission in Skardu, Sajid said that the three climbers may have had an accident while descending from the K2 "Bottleneck", considered the most dangerous route of the entire expedition.

"There is no hope to live [under such harsh conditions] for three straight days," Sajid said. “When I returned from Bottleneck at 8,200 metres, they were climbing up the Bottleneck at 11AM [on Friday]. I’m sure they made the K2 summit and on their way back they may have had an accident, that’s why they are missing,” he added.