Bad weather ends search for missing climbers

By Reuters/The Associated Press, The Gazette September 24, 2012 11:29 AM

 

Dr. Dominique Ouimet of Saint-Jérôme is among the three people who are unaccounted for after an avalanche swept away climbers on a Himalayan peak in Nepal on Sunday.

Photograph by: Courtesy of Fondation Hôpital régional de Saint-Jérôme

KATHMANDU — Reports that bad weather has cancelled search efforts on Monday does not offer much hope for the three climbers still unaccounted for on a Himalayan mountain after a weekend avalanche. Among the presumed missing is Quebecer Dominique Ouimet, a cardiologist from Saint-Jérôme regional hospital who was climbing Mount Manaslu to raise funds.
“We maintain hope that he will be found safe and sound,” his sister Isabelle Ouimet told the LCN network Sunday night, but she expressed disappointment and frustration about the lack of information she was getting about the situation in Nepal.
“I’d like it if someone in the organization would take the trouble to provide us with news,” she wrote on her own Facebook page.
“Nobody has contacted the family of Dominique Ouimet. I’ve done phone interviews on the radio and television in Canada. I have more tomorrow. I’ll have to be honest and tell them the truth: we don’t know who’s in charge of the search, how the search is being done, what steps have been taken so far. After the shock, anger is rising. Time is of the essence.”
A spokesperson for Fondation Hôpital régional de Saint-Jérôme said it was the first time the experienced climber had chosen to combine his passion for climbing with fundraising to procure specialized equipment for the cardiology department, Chantale Fortin said in an email to The Gazette.
Agence France-Presse is reporting officials are not confident three missing climbers will be found because of the difficult weather and terrain. Nepalie rescue helicopters were supposed to resume a search on Monday, but their efforts were hampered by fog, clouds and wind.
Eleven people are confirmed dead in the worst such disaster in two decades, seven French, two Germans and one Spanish and Nepalese.
Mount Manaslu is the world’s eighth-highest mountain at 8,163 metres (26,781 feet). Two German climbers and one each from Spain and Nepal also died.
Helicopters brought back five climbers from their base camp to Kathmandu on Sunday. One of them, a German, died while undergoing treatment at a hospital in the Nepali capital, taking the number of Germans killed to two.
At least 13 more people who were rescued on Sunday were still waiting at the base camp as fog and clouds made their rescue difficult, police official Basanta Bahadur Kunwar said. Their exact condition is not known.
“Rescue workers have gone to pick those 13 people up and look for at least three others who are reported missing,” Kunwar said from Gorkha district in northwestern Nepal, where the mountain lies.
Italian, German and French teams were on the mountain, with a total of 231 climbers and guides, but not all were at the higher camps hit by the avalanche.
Sunday’s avalanche came at the start of Nepal’s autumn climbing season, when the end of the monsoon rains makes weather in the high Himalayas unpredictable. Spring is a more popular mountaineering season, when hundreds of climbers crowd the high Himalayan peaks.
Nepal has eight of the 14 highest peaks in the world, including Mount Everest. Climbers have complained in recent years that conditions on the mountains have deteriorated and risks of accidents have increased.
Veteran guide Apa, who has climbed Mount Everest a record 21 times, travelled across Nepal earlier this year campaigning about the effects of global warming on the mountains.
He told The Associated Press the mountains now have considerably less ice and snow, making it harder for climbers to use ice axes and crampons on their boots to get a grip on the slopes.
Loose snow also increases the risk of avalanches. The cause of Sunday’s avalanche was not immediately determined.
At least 42 people were killed, including 17 foreigners in heavy snowfall in the Mount Everest region in 1995, the last major disaster.
Officials said the disaster was a blow to the promotion of a tourism sector important to the economy of an aid-dependent country still recovering from a decade of civil war.
“This is not good for mountaineering. It has made us alert about how to manage the size of the expeditions and avoid casualties,” Tourism Ministry official Surendra Sapkota said.
Climbing and trekking are major tourism activities in Nepal. Tourism accounts for four per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

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