Five Russian mountaineers were killed while climbing in Nepal, a tourism official said Tuesday, two days after the team lost contact while on the world’s seventh-highest mountain, Dhaulagiri.[…]CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE▶
Rakesh Gurung, from Nepal’s tourism department, said the team went missing late on the evening of October 6 during an attempt to summit the 8,167-metre (26,795-foot) Himalayan peak.
“Five dead bodies were discovered by a helicopter rescue team,” Gurung told AFP. A statement by the tourism department said that the five bodies were spotted at an altitude of 7,600 metres.
Gurung said one climber who quit the summit attempt had been rescued from the mountain and was admitted to hospital in the capital Kathmandu.
They were part of a 14-member Russian team who had split into two groups for their expedition. Hundreds of people from around the world travel to the Himalayas each year for the autumn climbing season in Nepal.
The country is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks, and foreign climbers that flock to its mountains are a major source of revenue for the country.
The rapid growth of the climbing industry has created fierce competition for business, and also raised fears that some companies are cutting corners on safety.
This autumn, Nepal has issued 763 permits for 34 peaks. Dhaulagiri’s peak was first scaled in 1960 by a Swiss-Austrian team and has since been climbed by hundreds of people…CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ARTICLES>>>
