Another Russian climber has frostbite. Vitaly Gorelik has frostbite of his hands. A helicopter has been called, but due to the bad weather he has been unable to be airlifted out. Vladimir Belous had flown home several days ago with frostbite to his hands.
At the same time though the expedition has made good progress up the Cesen route. Iljas Tukhvatullin, Andrew Mariev and Vadim Popovich made it to 7050m via fixed ropes. Then they fixed some ropes to 7200m. They were unable to setup camp because they would have needed to cut into the steep slope which they weren’t able to this time.
Below shows their progress up the Cesen route.
Source: 2011/12 Russian K2 expedition
February 7, 2012 at 2:48 am |
Unfortunatley it looks like Gorelik died, and expedition is over. Very sad.
Not sure what to think about those winter expeditions. There are always risks, and it was (and still is) very exciting following the ongoing winter expedtions this year so far. But here they had already to fly out one guy half frozen so conditions where obviously extremely harsh….anyway, very sad. As always thanks for the updates here!
February 8, 2012 at 12:26 am |
Thanks for that information. Looks like the weather prevented any chance he had of being evacuated by helicopter and thus getting hospital treatment.