Avalanche Claims Lives Of Climbers At Least Five Presumed Dead On World’s Second-Highest Peak
An avalanche near the summit of K-2, the world’s second-highest mountain, apparently killed at least five climbers, including the first woman to scale Mount Everest alone.
Alison Hargreaves of Britain reportedly was among those caught in the avalanche Sunday on the 28,250-foot peak in Pakistan’s Karakoram Range.
Hargreaves’ husband, Jim Ballard, said Thursday he hadn’t given up hope for his 33-year-old wife’s survival, but he was steeling for the worst.
“We shouldn’t grieve,” Ballard said. “She was actually where she wanted to be. She had climbed the mountain. She was the first woman to climb Everest and K-2 without supplementary oxygen and she was on her way down. At least, inside, she would have had the happiness of reaching the summit.”
Among the others feared dead were Rob Slater of Colorado, Jeff Lakes of Canada and two Spaniards, said Nazir Sabir, an expedition organizer. He said one body had been found but that identities of the missing were not expected until a member of the party could reach the mountain town of Skardu, probably on Saturday.
Sabir later told ITN television news that he had spoken to someone from the climbing party who said “he could see Alison’s body hanging somewhere out of reach.”
Sabir, contacted Wednesday by telephone in Skardu, said five to seven climbers were caught in the avalanche somewhere above the 26,400-foot mark.
“There are very little details, only that one of the bodies was found near Camp 2 and buried. There was no name or anything,” Sabir said.
In May, Hargreaves entered the record books by reaching the top of the 29,026-foot Mount Everest - the world’s highest peak - alone and without carrying oxygen.
She briefly returned to her husband and two small children at their home in Spean Bridge, Scotland, then headed back to tackle K-2. She wanted to go on to the third-highest peak - India’s Kanchenjunga - this year.
In a British Broadcasting Corp. interview shortly before she left, Hargreaves pointed out that K-2 is known as a “killer mountain,” more dangerous than Everest, because it attracts very bad storms.
“When we go climbing we obviously minimize the risks and if we thought it was that risky we wouldn’t go climbing,” she said. “Anybody who went off thinking that there was a very high chance they wouldn’t come back - it’s a very unfair thing to do especially with a young family.”
The only other British woman to have stood on the summit of K-2 was Julie Tullis in 1986, but she did not survive the descent and her body remains on the mountain.
“I’ve been rehearsing this dreadful day for nearly 10 years,” Ballard told BBC radio. He said he was planning to tell Tom, 6, and Kate, 4, that their mother might not be coming back.
K-2 is so named because it was the second peak measured in an 1856 survey of the Karakoram Range. It was first scaled by an Italian team in 1954.