Army Rescues Mountaineers From A Deadly Avalanche
Army Rescues Mountaineers From A Deadly Avalanche: The Pakistan Army rescued two foreign mountaineers yesterday and r
ecovered the body of another climber stuck on Ultar Sar peak in Hunza Valley after an avalanche hit their tent.
Bruce Normand and Miller Timothy from the United Kingdom were successfully rescued while an Austrian mountaineer, identified as Christian Huber, succumbed to his injuries in the avalanche, DG ISPR Major General Asif Ghafoor said in a tweet.
Christian Huber was killed while the two others were injured after their tent was hit by the avalanche at 19,000-foot high Ultar Sar peak in Hunza valley.
“The dead mountaineer was a citizen of Austria,” a local police official said, adding that Huber was reportedly struck by avalanche at 5,900 meters up Ultar Sar mountain.
British High Commissioner to Pakistan Thomas Drew thanked the Pakistan Army for the rescue operation.
The stranded foreigners, identified as Bruce Normand, Timothy Miller and an Austrian mountaineer Christian Huber, who was killed in the incident, are en route to Gilgit on an army helicopter, DG ISPR said.
The avalanche struck the men 5,900 metres up Ultar Sar mountain, located in Pakistan’s northern Hunza valley. “Austrian mountaineer Christian Huber was killed,” local Hunza police official Wajid Karim told AFP.
Karim said efforts were underway to bring Huber’s body and the injured mountaineers back to Islamabad.
An army helicopter could not carry out a rescue operation due to bad weather on the 7,388 metres high Ultar Sar, but a ground team were making their way up to the scene.
Northern Pakistan is a magnet for mountaineers and is home to some of the tallest mountains in the world, including K2 — at 8,611 metres, the world’s second highest peak, but often deemed a more challenging climb than the highest, Mount Everest.
Nestled between the western end of the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush mountains and the Karakoram range, Gilgit-Baltistan houses 18 of the world’s 50 highest peaks.
It is also home to three of the world’s seven longest glaciers outside the polar regions. Hundreds of its mountains have never been climbed.
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