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ISLAMABAD, Aug 1: Italian lady climber Nives Meroi and husband Romano Benet have reached the base camp after summiting K2. “They’ve spent the weekend packing and answering hundreds of congratulatory messages, including one from Italian President Romano Prodi”, says K2Climb.net website.
The couple scaled the 8,665-meter high K2, the second highest mountain of the world, on July 26 from the Abruzzi Spur route, achieving the first success on that peak since 2004.
“Nives and Romano climbed alone in great weather and good route conditions”, said the website. All the other expeditions decided to hold off.
Ms Nives has now bagged her 8th 8000-meter high peak success. No woman has climbed all the 14, 8000ers yet. Ms Nives is the closest together with Spanish Edurne who has climbed eight 8000ers and Austrian Gerlinde nine.
Ms Navis had attempted K2 three times, one from Chinese side and two from Pakistan side.
IRISH CLIMBER INJURED: Irish climber Gerard McDonnell was hit in the head by a falling rock on Saturday. He was helped down and will be evacuated from base camp (BC) by helicopter, said the website.
Three Irish climbers were pushing for a joint first national ascent. During ascent between camp 1 and 2, McDonnell was hit by a falling rock and evacuated to advanced base camp.
He received treatment from the Russian and Japanese doctors and was then evacuated to base camp where he awaits air evacuation.
Russian team: Leonid Butov, Alexander Lutokhin and Dmitry Sinev of the Russian Chernogolovka team made to the summit of Broad Peak on July 24 at 6:30pm. They are all safely back in BC.
GII: A large number of climbers scaled Gasharbrum-II through the week. Among them were Polish Pawel Mitura and Boguslaw Chamielec, Krzysztof Wielicki, Rafal Fronia, Robert Jucha, and Pawel Podsiadlo; Mexican couple Badia Bonilla and Mauricio Lopez; Spaniards Javier Dumal, Alberto Ayora, Fernando Yarto, Francisco Borja, Paco Briongos, Pablo Luque, Alberto Cerain, Kandido Aizpuru, Xabier Alzola, Manel Domingo and Juanjo Garra. This year is celebrated as the golden jubilee of the first ascent of GII.
Beside big teams, a number of independent climbers have scaled GI in the past two weeks. Among them is American Nicholas Rice, 22, who made to the top of the peak on July 25.
