Interrupted Wednesday morning after yet another aerial search, rescue operations to find three young French climbers in Nepal resumed on Friday. The young men are now missing since October 26 after an avalanche in the Everest region.
“The other five members of our team continue to search around the areas where the avalanche occurred,” said Ang Norbu Sherpa, president of the National Association of Mountain Guides of Nepal and head of the operation. search and rescue, back to Kathmandu. The weather was better on Friday to conduct the operations, for the time being still unsuccessful, according to him.
Hope with new detectors
The team has established a camp, equipped with materials, equipment including “two new modern Recco detectors” and food, so as “to continue the research” even Saturday and Sunday, “if the weather remains favorable”, he said. he adds. “The research will largely be carried out by these Recco detectors”, explained the rescuer, hoping “that these missing climbers have chips inserted in their shoes or their clothes”.
In their twenties, Louis Pachoud, Gabriel Miloche and Thomas Arfi had undertaken the ascent of the west face of Mingbo Eiger (6,070 meters above sea level). Members of the National Mountaineering Excellence Group (GEAN), an elite formation of the French Federation of Alpine and Mountain Clubs (FFCAM), they were part of a team that arrived at the end of September, in the Khumbu and Everest region, in order to climb different peaks culminating at some 5,000 and 6,000 m, south of Ama Dablam (6,814 m).
French relief expected on Saturday
A team of experienced international mountain guides is expected from France. “They will arrive in Kathmandu tomorrow (Saturday),” Ang Norbu Sherpa continued, stressing that they will need some time to acclimatize before they can join operations. “The hope of finding survivors is now almost nil,” FFCAM said on Monday, while the search was taking place near the summit of Mingbo Eiger.
The last telephone contact with the young people from their bivouac dates back to October 26, according to the Federation. “The reconnaissance by helicopter dispatched by the FFCAM on Sunday 31 October in the morning as well as the overflight of their way on Monday 1 November made it possible to locate their tracks up to 5,900 meters on the ridge which leads to the summit. At this altitude, the rescuers were able to observe the outbreak of an avalanche, ”added the FFCAM.
Nepal reopened its doors in September to foreign climbers, exempting those vaccinated from quarantine. The Covid-19 pandemic brought the tourism industry to a halt last year in the country of 30 million people, devastating its heavily dependent economy.