Pakistan suspends winter ascents after 3 climbers go missing

The K2 summit is seen in this 2008 photo. (Credit: Svy123 / Wikimedia Commons)

ISLAMABAD — Three mountaineers who went missing earlier this month while attempting to scale the world's second-highest mountain, K2, should now be considered dead, Pakistani officials said Thursday.

The announcement brings closure to a dramatic tragedy on one of the most dangerous mountains to climb in the world. K2 had never been scaled in winter until only last month when a Nepalese team reached the peak.

Search efforts for the milling climbers, famous Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara as well as Jon Snorri of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile, were called off last week amid bad weather.

Clouds, strong winds and snow had made previous search-and-rescue operations too dangerous -- for both mountaineers on foot as well as helicopters.

Sadpara's son, Sajid speaking at a news conference alongside officials, told reporters in the northern town of Skardu that he was grateful authorities did their best to try to find the group, which went missing on Feb. 5.

"I believe they scaled it but had an accident while coming down," younger Sadpara said, adding that he himself had hoped to join the group but couldn't because his oxygen tanks malfunctioned.

Karrar Haidri of the Pakistan Alpine Club told The Associated Press that the climbers' death was a great loss.

"We ae very sad over the tragic demise of all the three climbers," he said, adding that authorities had used helicopters and porters to try to recover the bodies but that even those efforts had failed.

The three climbers lost contact with their base camp while attempting their ascent of the 8,611-meter (28,250-foot) high K2 -- sometimes referred to as "killer mountain."

In winter, winds on K2 can blow at more than 200 kph (125 mph) and temperatures can drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 Fahrenheit). In one of the deadliest mountaineering accidents ever, 11 climbers died in a single day trying to scale K2 in 2008.