Snowstorm kills 9 climbers in Nepal
KATHMANDU — Nine climbers, including five South Korean nationals, who were part of a trekking expedition, have been killed after an avalanche buried the base camp of Mount Gurja in western Nepal, police and authorities said here on Saturday.
The bodies of eight climbers — four South Koreans and four Nepali guides — were spotted near the wreckage of their camp by a rescue team on Saturday morning, but strong winds were hampering the search effort.
A fifth South Korean climber was initially reported missing, but officials later confirmed he was at the camp when the deadly storm hit on Friday and also perished.
“A mountain expedition of five South Korean nationals and four foreigners were swept off by strong winds at the base camp during their climb to Mount Gurja. (They) fell off a cliff and died,” the South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement.
Wangchu Sherpa, the managing director at Trekking Camp Nepal, which is the expedition company of the team, also confirmed to local Himalayan Times online that the team leader along with their support staff were killed in the incident.
“Local eyewitnesses have told us by phone that eight dead bodies were found scattered around base camp. Rescue teams are yet to reach the site,” the police official said from the district headquarters.
Helicopter pilot Siddartha Gurung was among the first people to reach the site after the deadly storm and described a scene of total destruction.
He said all the tents had been flattened, reduced to a tangled mess of tarpaulin and broken poles, and the climbers’ bodies were scattered across a wide area, including some in a river bed some 500 meters from the main camp.
“Everything is gone, all the tents are blown apart,” Gurung said.
Attempts to reach the remote camp on Saturday to retrieve the bodies were hampered by strong winds, but a team was preparing to deploy at first light on Sunday if conditions allow, officials confirmed.
The expedition was being lead by feted South Korean climber Kim Chang-ho, who in 2013 became the fastest person to summit the world’s 14 highest mountains without using supplemental oxygen.
The team had been on 7,193-meter Mount Gurja since early October, waiting for a window of good weather so they could attempt to reach the summit, hoping to do so via a never-climbed route.
Rarely-climbed Gurja was first summited in 1969 by a Japanese team but no one has stood on its summit for 22 years, according to the Himalayan Database.