GILGIT: One member of a three-man team of foreign climbers died and two others were injured when an avalanche hit their camp on the 7,338-metre-high Ultar Sar in Hunza on Saturday.

Abdul Karim, a tour operator, told Dawn the three mountaineers — Christian Huber, Bruce Normand and Timothy Miller — were sleeping in their tents when an avalanche hit them.

He said Mr Huber, an Austrian citizen, died in the incident. The two other mountaineers, who are Britons, were injured. Their condition is said to be out of danger.

The tour operator said the Civil Aviation Authority had been requested to provide a helicopter to rescue the injured mountaineers. The weather conditions, however, were not very favourable on Saturday.

Mr Karim said an operation would be launched on Sunday to rescue the stranded mountaineers as soon as the weather conditions improved.

Karrar Haidri, a spokesman for the Alpine Club of Pakistan, confirmed the incident and said: “The Ultar peak has claimed a number of lives and seen only a few successful summits.”

Mr Huber, he said, was the president of the American Alpine Club.

Mr Haidri said that three South Korean climbers, who were injured while attempting to scale Latok peak in the Karakoram range recently, had reached their country.

He added that three groups of foreign climbers were currently trying to scale K2, the second highest mountain in the world.

Jamal Shahid in Islamabad contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2018