GILGIT: A three-member K2 winter expedition team consisting of Pakistani mountaineer Mohammad Ali Sadpara, his 22-year-old son Sajid Ali Sadpara and Iceland’s John Snorri had to return to the base camp on Monday forced by the bad weather.

However, the team announced another attempt to scale the world’s second highest peak before end of winter.

On Sunday evening, the team had started an aggressive ascent to the summit from the base camp planning to target the peak on Monday.

Before the ascent from the base camp, John Snorri through a social media post had said: “We are aiming for the summit of K2 on Monday.”

“This ascent will be extremely challenging; we are planning for the camp 3 at noon on Sunday; take a short rest and then start our summit push at 6pm. Hopefully, if all goes according to plan we will have a successful summit. We are all exited and ready for this project of a lifetime,” he had said.

The team had managed to climb up to 6,831 meters by Monday noon when their connection with the base camp got disconnected as the GPS devices with the climbers went off.

According to the expedition officials, high speed winds at higher camps prevented the climbers to move up.

They stayed at the camp 2 on Monday night assessing the weather condition to continue the adventure, but weather remained bad and high-speed winds continued, forcing them to start descend towards the base camp on Monday morning.

John Snorri updated on Monday that they were back in the base camp and that all of them were safe and sound.

“Still we are feeling well and have already started to plan our next summit push. The window we are looking at is the 3rd to 5th of February,” he said.

The expedition organiser Asghar Ali Porik confirmed that the team had returned to the base camp by Monday evening.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2021