Skardu
Vanessa O’Brien, first woman to reach Earth’s Highest (Everest) and Lowest Points (Challenger Deep), on Wednesday claimed that Iceland Space Agency will review Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) technology -never before used in search and rescue – to cover every inch of the higher elevations of K2 despite the bad conditions in order to locate the missing climbers.
Vanessa thanked Pakistan Army pilots for the helicopter flights, who pushed the upper limits during each of these search flights and thanked Pakistan Army Chief and ISPR, and the Foreign Ministers of Iceland, Pakistan and Chile. Rao Ahmad, Muhammad Ali Sadpara’s long-time friend and Sajid Sadpara, Ali Sadpara’s son, along with British-American climber, Vanessa O’Brien, who also serves as Pakistan’s Goodwill Ambassador and summited K2 with John Snorri, have formed a ‘virtual base camp’ for search-and-rescue effort.
In a statement shared on her twitter account, Vanessa said, “The families of three missing climbers from Iceland, Chile and Pakistan have decided to proceed with their rescue mission despite four days of gruelling nonstop intensive search-and-rescue coming to a halt due to bad weather.” It is pertinent to note that John Snorri, Ali Sadpara and Juan Pablo Mohr had joined forces to make a summit bid on K2 — the last eight-thousand-meter peak unclimbed in winter until a team of 10 Nepali summited earlier this year.
According to Vanessa, “The fact that they have not been found yet could be because they have built an ice cave or shelter, and if they had sufficient fuel to melt water, it could have extended their lifeline, but it depends how low they made it down on the mountain.”—INP
