Snowstorms in the region
Five Russian mountaineers die in the Himalayas
October 8, 2024, 8:37 p.m
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Almost 200 meters below the summit, several mountaineers stop climbing the White Mountain in the Himalayas. Then contact with the group is lost. Days later, rescuers discovered their bodies.
Five mountaineers from Russia have had a fatal accident in the Himalayas on the seventh highest mountain in the world. The bodies of the climbers were found on the 8,167-meter-high Dhaulagiri 1, also called the “White Mountain,” said a spokesman for the tourism office in the Nepalese Ministry of Culture and Tourism. A search team discovered the bodies from the air at an altitude of around 7,600 meters. No decision has yet been made about their recovery. The deaths of the Russian climbers were also confirmed by the organizer of their tour, I AM Trekking & Expedition.
The exact cause of the accident was initially unclear. The company manager suspected they might have fallen on the way down. On Sunday they informed the base camp via radio that they had begun their descent at an altitude of 8,000 meters. It was too late for the final climb to the summit. Contact was then broken off, it was said. Since then they have been missing. According to Nepalese officials, there had been heavy snowstorms in the affected area in recent days.
The Himalayas are home to 10 of the world’s 14 mountains whose peaks are more than 8,000 meters high, including Mount Everest, which is the highest at 8,849 meters above sea level. The autumn mountaineering season in the Himalayas begins in September.