GILGIT: Six climbers from two foreign expedition teams summited Gasherbrum II (8,034 metres) on Sunday morning. With this, a total of nine climbers have completed the Gasherbrum II in 24 hours.
The climbers, Marco Catanzaro from Italy, Altansukh Tserendorj Mongolia and Dawa Nurbu Sherpa and Mingma Nurbu Sherpa from Nepal, who were part of the Seven Summit Trek team, successfully reached the summit at 6:50am.
Summit Karakoram Managing Director Sakhawat Hussain told Dawn that two members of the 8k expedition, Chris Warner from the US and Chhiring Sherpa of Nepal, scaled the mountain at 6:12am. They are now headed back to the base camp. On Saturday, Norway’s Kristin Harila and Nepal’s Tenjen Sherpa and Mingtemba Sherpa successfully summited the world’s 13th-highest peak.
K2 summit
More than 250 foreign climbers are also preparing to summit K2 (8,611m) — the world’s second-highest mountain.
Alan Arnette, the oldest American climber to scale K2 and famous alpine blogger, has said it was a good weekend on Gasherbrum II and Broad Peak, with multiple summits.
Teams have continued their acclimatisation rotations on K2 with ropes attached to Camp 3. Sherpas are stocking Camps 2 and 3 with tents, stoves, fuel and oxygen for the summit push.
Separately, Sajid Ali Sadpara with a team from Seven Summit Treks has started his mission to clean the K2.
During the clean-up, the team will remove fixed lines of ropes and hundreds of pounds of frozen garbage from the mountain.
In a Twitter post on Saturday, Mr Sadpara said, “We have finally reached basecamp for #K2CleanUp2023.”
Mr Sadpara, the son of legendary mountaineer late Muhammad Ali Sadpara, was the first Pakistani to scale seven 8,000’ers peaks including Everest (8,848 m), K2, Nanga Parbat (8,126m), Annapurna (8,091m), Gasherbrum I (8,080m), Gasherbrum-II and Manaslu (8,163m) without supplemental oxygen and porter support.
He aims to scale all 14 peaks over 8,000m in height in alpine style — without the aid of supplemental oxygen.
Sajid Ali Sadpara’s K-2 clean-up campaign was announced earlier and is scheduled to run from run from June to August.
Earlier on Jan 5, Mr Sadpara announced his plan to clean up the mountain which is laden with corpses, abandoned ropes, tin packs, tents, climbing gears, human waste, and plastic wrappers.
“I am excited to announce the K-2 Clean Up Campaign this year from June-Aug 2023. Every climber loves K-2, but as a son of soil my heart burns to see our beloved K2, the most iconic landmark of Pakistan being compared with ‘pigsty’.
Sharing the details with Dawn before going for his mission, Mr Sadpara said the expedition was now proving to be detrimental for people, both locals and climbers.
On average, every climber during a commercial expedition generates 8 to 10 kilograms of waste on the mountain Mr Sadpara said. He added the fragile ecosystem of the area gets contaminated by these pollutants.
Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2023
