ISLAMABAD: Mirza Ali’s expedition to the Mount Everest has come to an end as the Chinese government had closed the mountain after the powerful earthquake wracked havoc in the region killing thousands of people in Nepal.

Mirza Ali was attempting to scale the world’s tallest mountain from the north side in China. The powerful earthquake triggered avalanches on Mount Everest killing local and foreign climbers attempting to scale the summit from the southern face of the peak in Nepal on Sunday.

Read: Samina Baig becomes first Pakistani woman to conquer seven highest peaks

No avalanche was, however, reported by Mirza Ali, who was climbing the mountain from the Chinese side.

Mirza Ali did not climb the 8, 850 meters high peak in 2013, allowing his sister, Samina Baig to capture the summit and become the first Pakistani woman to climb the Mount Everest.

This attempt was particularly important for Mirza Ali. Had he scaled the summit he would have become the first Pakistani climbing all seven of the highest mountains in the seven continents.

“I climbed 6, 700 meters to the mountain. But a terrible earthquake made the entire climbing experience a nightmare,” Mirza Ali told Dawn on Watsapp.

Although Mirza Ali was still acclimatizing, he had come close to capturing the summit and was targeting to reach the top between May 10 and May 20.

On April 26, he told Dawn how Chinese mountaineering team had fixed ropes up to 8, 300 meters. “But both the Chinese and Tibet mountaineering associations suspended climbing attempts for the next four days due to heavy aftershocks that followed the killer 7.8 magnitude earthquake,” said the Pakistani climber.

For the time being Mirza Ali has been stuck on the mountain with his climbing team for a week at least.

“The authorities concerned are sorting out our evacuation plan since road to Nepal is completely destroyed,” said Mirza Ali explaining how all climbers might be airlifted to safety.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2015

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