Bodies Recovered, Search Continues After Deadly Avalanche Buries Climbers on Broad Peak
Ten mountaineers were caught in the slide; an American climber is among those confirmed dead
By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
ISLAMABAD — Rescue teams in northern Pakistan have recovered three bodies from an avalanche that swept over at least ten mountaineers on Broad Peak, one of the world's most dangerous 8,000-meter peaks, with the search for seven more climbers still underway, according to the BBC.
Among the dead is American climber Sarah Mallory Geis, whose remains were located by search teams, Fox News reported. The circumstances of the avalanche itself — its exact timing and trigger — were not detailed in the reporting available to this desk, and readers should treat the death toll as provisional while recovery operations continue in difficult high-altitude terrain.
Broad Peak, straddling the border of Pakistan and China in the Karakoram range, draws climbers each summer season despite a grim record of avalanches and altitude sickness. Rescue operations at that elevation are slow and dangerous in themselves; helicopters can only fly in narrow weather windows, and ground teams face the same unstable snowpack that caused the original slide.
Why it matters: for the families of the seven still missing, every day without word narrows the odds. For the mountaineering world, it is another entry in the long ledger of what these peaks take from those who attempt them — a reminder that arrives most summers, and rarely changes the calculus of who goes back.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE —
— Compiled from reporting by the BBC and Fox News.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."