ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Three foreign climbers are missing and feared dead on Pakistan’s Karakorum mountain range in the country’s far north, an official said yesterday.
Pakistan is home to five of the world’s 14 “super peaks” – those over 8,000 metres high – and the climbing season is in full swing.
A senior government official from the Gilgit Baltistan tourism department told AFP that Canadian Richard Cartier and Australian Matthew Eakin were missing on K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, while Briton Gordon Henderson was lost climbing Broad Peak, the 12th-highest.
“We cannot declare them dead until the bodies are found,” the official said.
“We pray we find them alive, but the chances are very slim.”
Henderson, a wing commander with Britain’s Royal Air Force, went missing on July 19 on the 8,051-metre Broad Peak, the armed force said on its verified Facebook page.
