KOLKATA: Four climbers from Kolkata summitted Mt Everest on Saturday morning, but the cheer was dampened by reports that three other climbers may be missing in what’s known as the `Death Zone’ -8000m and above.
The grim news comes just a day after news reached that Everester Rajib Bhattacharya was killed on the descent from Mt Dhaulagiri, the seventh highest peak.
While Ramesh Roy, Malay Mukherjee, Satyarup Siddhanta and Rudraprasad Haldar stood on top of the world at 5.40am and were back in Camp IV by Saturday evening, there has been no contact with climbers Sunita Hazra, Gautam Ghosh and Paresh Nath since Friday evening. They were last tracked at 7.30pm on Friday when they started their climb for the summit. “We have not heard anything about them since then,” said Sudeb Hazra, Sunita’s husband. Both groups were with different agencies.
The four that are confirmed safe were with 7-Summit agency. Its owner Mingma Sherpa confirmed that they reached Camp IV at 7.50pm. Those yet to be traced are with Loben Expedition, which has an office in Darjeeling. Curiously, the family of a Loben climber, Subhas Pal, were told that he was seen around 11.30am on Saturday climbing down to Camp IV along with the four from 7-Summit.
Satyarup’s friend Tirthankar Pyne told TOI how he was tracking him via a GPS gadget he had strapped on.”At 5.40am, it flashed on my laptop screen -8,848 meters! I knew it was emitting from Satyarup’s GPS. My friends and I were glued to GPS tracking websites all night, checking every movement of the four-member team,” he said.
The last update on Satyarup’s Facebook page was at 6.30pm on Friday: “With all ur blessings starting for the final push. Keep us in ur prayers.”
The phrase “final push” told his friends that they were striking out for the summit. They had arrived at South Col at 1.30pm and rested a while before going for the peak. Beyond Camp IV , the final outpost between Everest and Lhotse at an altitude of around 26,000 feet or 8,000 meters, is what mountaineers call the Death Zone. Here, a climber’s body stops acclamatising and starts dying slowly till the climber returns to below 8,000m.
Till Camp IV , all eight climbers from Kolkata were in good health. On Lhotse face, a Sherpa met with an accident and died while opening the route, say sources. There were also issues with the oxygen in stock but it was sorted out. “They had chosen this time of the year as the weather forecast was good. They expected it to be less windy ,” said Tirthankar.Things didn’t go according to plan, though. On May 5, the weather was fluctuating at Camp II.
Till Camp IV , the climbers had to retuern to the previous camps for better acclamatisation. Till May 7, they had only touched 7,100m. More challenges came when the team’s oxygen was used by another team. But the four made it to the top.
“It was Ramesh’s second try . Last year, they reached base camp the day Nepal suffered a devastating earthquake. They had to come back and the entire investment was a loss. It was hard arranging funds this year,” said Tirthankar. Ramesh, a Central Excise inspector, is a veteran climber. source:- timesofindia.com