Rawalpindi: Poor weather on Wednesday continued to hamper the search and rescue mission for climbers Mohammad Ali Sadpara, Jon Snorri and Juan Pablo Mohr who were last seen near the K2 Bottleneck on Friday morning.
The Inter-Services Public Relations said the search team is on standby and will carry on with the mission once the weather shows improvement.
“Mostly dry, extremely cold max, -35°C on Wed afternoon. Winds decreasing (severe gales from the WSW [west-southwest] on Wed night),” a forecast on Mountain Forecast said.
The forecast added that temperature is expected to be -41°C on Thu afternoon, with light winds from the west-northwest by Friday afternoon.
The search operation for Sadpara and his colleagues has been constantly plagued by bad weather. The operation was temporarily suspended on Sunday, after army helicopters failed to locate the mountaineers despite flying at their maximum limit of 7,800 metres.
The mission had to be suspended on Monday as well due to low visibility and poor weather conditions.
Yesterday, the operation had to be suspended again due to strong winds and snowfall.
The three climbers lost contact with the base camp late on Friday and were reported missing on Saturday after their support team stopped receiving communications from them during their attempt to summit the world’s second-highest mountain.