In a radius of fifty kilometer around Broad Peak, there is no human being except the Polish winter team at BC and a couple of Pakistan Army personnel on Baltoro glacier. The nearest society of humans is at least a week away, with a 100km walk on the river of ice. The climbers are up against
ruthlessness of the mountain and extreme weather. But under such circumstance, they carve one of the finest stories of kindness and selflessness. Karim Hayyat made a brave attempt to reach Maciej Berbeka and Tomasz Kowalski, yesterday afternoon. He solo climbed from C2 and reached 7700-7800m in the afternoon. Later, he and Artur were ready to spend the night in C4 waiting for missing climbers. Remember, Artur had returned to C4 after an exhausting 20 hour summit push the night before. Moreover, forecast predicted hurricane winds next day but for the love of colleagues, they were ready to risk their own lives. Duo descended once their leader asked them to do so, later in the evening. Amin and Shaheen went up today again, hoping that they might be able to see some movement which is unnoticeable from BC binocular. The duo is spending the night on the mountain at 7000m, trying to spot the torch light of missing climbers.
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| Shaheen Baig, Artur Malek, Tomasz Kowalski (27-01-13); Source |
Yesternight, Adam, Shaheen and Amin reached BC at 9:30PM, while Artur and Karim were descending just below 7000m. They reached base camp late in the night. Fortunately, everyone including summiteers Adam and Artur are doing well and there aren't any signs of frostbite. While retreating from the mountain, the climbers left the camps on the mountain with ample food and heating stoves cached in them, for missing fellows, hoping that they might just appear from somewhere. Today, weather conditions didn’t deteriorate too much. Base camp team searched the wall using the telescope, all day long. Unfortunately there was nothing up there.
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| Maciej Berbeka on first summit push; Photo by Tomasz; Source |
Today, Krzysztof Wielicki sent Amin Ullah Baig and Shaheen Baig up the mountain to examine and observe the wall from an angle different than BC's. As per original plan, they had to return back to BC before night but probably the weather is still favorable. Hence, it was decided that Shaheen and Amin should spend the night in C3. Tonight everyone would be keeping an eye on the wall to spot torch lights. Amin and Shaheen would observe from C3 (7000m) while Poles would be out of their tents at BC (4900m). Future plan would be devised after analyzing the weather conditions tomorrow morning.
Also, the search operation hasn’t been abandoned on Nanga Parbat. Solo climber,
Joel Wischnewski, who was climbing the mountain on Rupal face went missing on 7th February. As per his last communication with LO and home team, he was climbing above C2 (4300m) and supposedly intended to follow the SE Pillar to summit. A
rescue operation was launched on 16th February but unfortunately, the teams couldn’t climb beyond C2 due to bad weather. Weather remained unfavorable for ten days and search mission had to be halted. After the improvement in weather, a helicopter search over the specified section of mountain was planned for 2nd March but the flight couldn’t be executed because of unforeseen issues. Daniel Wischnewski, brother of Joel, has shared the plan of search mission in an email, a while ago.
“It’s decided to launch another mission by land. The expedition is currently at 3900m and will climb to Joël's C2 soon to find some clues that may help them in their search on the SE Pillar” ... “It seems that the new rescue team talked a lot with Fida Hussain (Joël's LO) and the former rescue team members.”
Let’s hope for a fruitful outcome of this operation.
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| Snowboarder Joel Wischnewski, a day before Pakistan. Source |
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