Climber Tom’s girlfriend: I pleaded with him not to go
THE girlfriend of a British climber who died on a Himalayan peak known as the ‘Killer Mountain’ has revealed she begged him not to go.
Stefania Pederiva said she repeatedly urged Tom Ballard not to climb Nanga Parbat, in northern Pakistan, where his body was found over the weekend.
Miss Pederiva, who is Italian, said she felt ‘heartbreaking pain and strong anger’ over his decision to ignore her warnings.
She added: ‘There are or will never be words suitable to describe the void you left.’
On Saturday – a fortnight after they vanished – officials confirmed both Mr Ballard, 30, and his Italian climbing partner Daniele Nardi, 42, had died.
Mr Ballard was the son of Alison Hargreaves, who died aged 33 while descending nearby K2 in 1995.
Addressing her boyfriend in a post on Facebook, Miss Pederiva said: ‘ Your dreams were not there, and that is why Mother Nature no longer protected you. I will find you in nature, in the rivers in the trees in the mountains, you will always be my most beautiful rock.’
She added that she felt ‘a heartbreaking pain and a strong anger for not listening to my constant words that told you that on that mountain you didn’t have to go’.
The Pakistani authorities last week dispatched a specialist team of four climbers – led by Spanish mountaineer Alex Txikon – to find the climbers. They had last made contact on February 24.
On Wednesday the rescue team spotted two silhouettes at a height of about 19,400ft on Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth-highest mountain. Mr Nardi had tried to climb it several times before.
Over the weekend officials confirmed the identities of the bodies. However, they were in a place that was difficult to reach, Italy’s ambassador to Pakistan said. Stefano Pontecorvo added that everything possible would be done to try to recover them.