Rescuers Battle Everest Winds To Find Climbers Twenty-Two Stranded By Fierce Blizzard; Up To 8 May Be Dead

Rescuers battled fierce winds Sunday as they searched for two Americans and six other missing climbers, and attempted to reach 22 people stranded on a 5-mile high pass on Mount Everest.

The climbers, hailing from 11 separate expeditions, became disoriented or were forced to cut short their treks when a blizzard hit the world’s highest mountain over the weekend.

There were reports that most of the eight missing climbers had died, but they couldn’t immediately be confirmed.

Seaborn B. Weathers, 49, of Dallas, who had earlier been reported missing, has returned to a lofty Everest pass known as South Col, Nepalese Tourism Ministry spokesman Hari Sharan Shreshta said.

A separate expedition led by American Scott Fischer apparently became lost Friday while descending the summit to the 26,400-foot-high South Col.

Rescuers were hoping to reach Fischer, 40, of Seattle, who was last reported Saturday afternoon as unconscious at a 27,000-foot site on the mountain, according to messages posted by Fischer’s group on the Internet computer network.

The eight others in his expedition were forced to leave him - bundled up and with oxygen - to “concentrate their flagging strength” on getting another stricken climber and themselves to safety. They were in good condition and heading toward their base camp on Sunday, it said.

Karen Dickinson, Fischer’s business partner in Seattle who’s been in touch with the expedition, said she believed Fischer had died.

Reports before the blizzard showed Fischer’s climb was largely uneventful until the end.

On May 2, a dispatch from Jane Bromet at the base camp described Fischer as “feeling super-strong, acclimatized and strong,” still planning to start the last phase of the ascent May 6 and reach the top May 9.

Much of the information from the 29,028-foot-high Everest was sketchy, derived from satellite telephone links between hikers and their base camps and Internet messages.

There were reports of deaths of missing hikers not confirmed by official sources:

Relatives of Douglas Hansen, 44, of Renton, Wash., said they had been told he died. There were no other details of his situation.

Three members of an Indian police expedition were reported missing and presumed dead, New Delhi officials told the United News of India news agency on Sunday.

A Japanese mountaineers’ association told Kyodo News on Sunday that rescuers had found the bodies of Yasuko Namba, 47, of Japan and Andrew Michael Harris, 32 of New Zealand. The Tokyo news agency said Namba was only the second Japanese woman to reach the top of Mount Everest.

Both Namba and Harris were members of an expedition led by New Zealand climber Rob Hall. Internet reports said Hall remained missing near the summit Sunday with severe frostbite.

New Zealand Adventure Tourism Council chief executive Geoff Gabites confirmed today that the New Zealand expedition had run into serious trouble.

“It seems at least three climbers are unaccounted for,” said Gabites. He said Hall’s oxygen is believed to have run out. Alpine experts say no one has ever survived two nights in the open without oxygen on the south summit of Mount Everest.

Meanwhile, a Rhode Island 16-year-old who is trying to become the youngest climber to scale Mount Everest planned to press on with his expedition, the boy’s father said Sunday.

Middletown High School sophomore Mark Pfetzer spoke by phone to his father, Ken Pfetzer, from a base camp at 18,000 feet.

He told his father his expedition had been camped at 26,000 feet on Friday when a sudden blizzard hit, forcing them to descend to Camp II.