Kathmandu: At least eight climbers, including a South Korean world-record holder, have been killed after a violent snowstorm ripped through their camp in the Himalaya Mountains in Nepal, officials said on Saturday.
The climbers — four South Koreans who were planning to summit Mount Gurja, and their four guides — died on Friday after falling off a cliff during the storm, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said on Saturday. Nepali officials said the bodies of the team's local guides were also spotted from a helicopter.
A fifth climber from South Korea was missing and feared dead.
It was the deadliest accident to hit Nepal's climbing community since 2015, when an avalanche set off by an earthquake pummelled climbers on Mount Everest, killing 18 people.
"It seems no one is alive," said Wangchu Sherpa, the managing director of Trekking Camp Nepal, the company overseeing the climbing expedition on Mount Gurja.
Rescuers said early Saturday that they had located the bodies of eight climbers near Mount Gurja's base camp. But helicopters could not land in the area long enough to retrieve them because of strong winds and the remoteness of the camp. The nearest police station is a three-day walk.
Shailesh Thapa Kshetri, a police spokesman in Nepal, said it was unlikely that an avalanche had struck the team, because the bodies were not buried. He noted that the storm was particularly strong.
"Their tents were destroyed, and the dead bodies were scattered," he said.
Among the dead was Kim Chang-ho, a decorated climber who had scaled the world's 14 tallest peaks, including Mount Everest, in a record time span of seven years and 10 months, according to South Korean mountaineering officials. He was also one of a few climbers who summited those peaks without the aid of supplemental oxygen.
"Endless glaciers under my feet make my heart throb," Kim was once quoted as saying. "I feel like I should discover every corner of the Himalayas."
The New York Times
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