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A rescue team began Sunday to recover the bodies of nine mountaineers killed during a violent storm on Mount Gurja in Nepal, an abnormal accident that rocked the mountaineering community.
A helicopter dropped four mountain guides at the camp where the South Korean climbing expedition was taking place when strong winds and snow swept the city, killing the entire team and dispersing their bodies up to a distance of 500 meters.
"The nine bodies were found and the team is shooting them down," said Siddartha Gurung, a helicopter pilot who coordinates the recovery mission.
A second helicopter, accompanied by a team of rescue specialists and villagers, was also involved in the mission, which was hampered by the strong winds and the remoteness of the camp in the mountain range. Dhaulagiri, in the region of Annapurna, Nepal.
The bodies of mountaineers – five South Koreans and four Nepalese – will be airlifted to Pokhara, a tourist hub that serves as a gateway to the Annapurna region, and then to Kathmandu, said Yogesh Sapkota of Simrik Air, a helicopter company involved. in the effort.
The expedition camp was totally destroyed by the powerful storm, which struck on Thursday or late Friday in the area, which razed all the tents and left a tangled mess of tarpaulins and bureaus. vote broken.
"The base camp looks like a bomb," said Dan Richards of Global Rescue, a US-based emergency assistance group that will participate in recovery efforts.
Wangchu Sherpa, of Trekking Camp Nepal, who organized the expedition, said he sent a helicopter to investigate Saturday morning after the team had not been in contact for more than 24 hours.
– Experienced climbers –
The experiment was led by Kim Chang-ho, an experienced South Korean mountaineer, who climbed the 14 highest mountains in the world without using additional oxygen.
The mountaineering experts are wondering how the experienced team was so badly affected while still at the base camp, at about 3,500 meters above sea level.
"At this point, we do not understand how it happened.You do not usually get this kind of extreme winds at this altitude and base camps are usually chosen because they are safe places" Richards said.
The team had been on Mount Gurja since the beginning of October, at 7,193 meters (23,599 feet), hoping to climb this mountain rarely climbed by a new route.
A sixth South Korean mountaineer was staying in a village lower down the valley when the storm hit, after being forced to descend to a lower altitude due to health problems.
According to the Himalayan database, only 30 people have already reached the summit of Mount Gurja with the last successful ascent recorded in 1996.
This storm is the deadliest one that has hit the mountaineering industry in Nepal since 18 people were killed at Mount Everest base camp in 2015 in an avalanche caused by a powerful earthquake.
The previous year, 16 Sherpas had been killed on Everest when an avalanche had swept the icefall of Khumbu during the spring climbing season.
Then, in October of the same year, a snow storm killed over 40 tourists and their guides in the Annapurna area. This disaster was largely attributed to poor weather forecasts and poor safety standards in Nepal's poorly regulated hiking industry.
