Missing Russian-American climber Alex Goldfarb found dead in Pakistan
A Russian-American climber who went missing last week while trying to scale a mountain amid harsh winter weather in northern Pakistan has been found dead, the region’s tourist police and the Alpine Club of Pakistan said on Tuesday.
The tourist police in the town of Gilgit made the announcement on Twitter, saying Alex Goldfarb went missing on Friday while he was trying to summit the Pastore Peak, not far from K2, the most prominent peak on the Pakistani side of the Himalayan range, and the world’s second tallest after Mount Everest.
Contact with Goldfarb was lost and a helicopter rescue and search team was sent out. The Pakistan army on Monday found the body, after a daylong search, according to Karrar Haidri, the secretary of the Alpine Club of Pakistan.
Muhammad Ali Sadpara, a Pakistani mountaineer who was part of the rescue team, also tweeted the news. Efforts are now underway to bring Goldfarb’s body down with the help of Pakistani and foreign mountaineers.
Goldfarb and Hungarian climber Zoltan Szlanko had initially planned to scale Pastore together but Szlanko later decided to turn back. Haidri expressed condolences to Goldfarb’s family, saying “I will never forget his kindness.”
Goldfarb was a doctor and lecturer at Harvard University. He had volunteered to treat Covid-19 patients during the pandemic according to his son, Levi.
“He thought [mountain climbing] was beautiful,” Levi Goldfarb said. “He thought it was liberating, because up in the mountains it didn’t really matter who you were at sea level – a doctor, a lawyer, or even a thief, all of those labels were stripped away and you were playing by a different set of rules. He made great friends in the mountains, he saved lives and saved himself, and he travelled the world doing it.”
On Saturday, a team of Nepalese climbers made history by making the first winter ascent of K2. Hundreds of local and foreign climbers travel to northern Pakistan every year and accidents are common because of avalanches and sudden changes in weather.