712 climbers allowed to scale peaks in Nepal
A total of 712 climbers have received permission by Wednesday to climb 29 mountains in Nepal during the fall climbing season.
After waiting for the weather to clear for about two days, a 32-member team of Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) moved to Munsayari in Pithoragarh district on Thursday to kick off their special operation to retrieve bodies of climbers from Nanda Devi east.
After a night halt at Bugadiya, the team will head for the Nanda Devi base camp on Friday. An eight-member team of climbers, led by famous British mountain guide Martin Moran, remain missing since 26-27 May at Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand.
A special operation is presently underway in Uttarakhand, in which ITBP and Indian Mountaineering Foundation teams will be making effort to retrieve bodies of the eight climbers, who are presumed dead.
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The climbers possibly lost their lives in an avalanche and an aerial photograph taken recently by Indian Air Force team showed five dead bodies scattered in a glacier.
A team of Indian Mountaineering Foundation, led by Dhurv Joshi, will be approaching the Nanda Devi area through Pindari in Pithoragarh. The IMF team began their trek from Bageshwar on 11 June and is likely to reach the base camp by Friday.
Pithoragarh district information officer Girja Shanker Joshi said, “The equipments of the ITBP mountaineering team will be taken on an IAF chopper to the base camp on Friday.”
The operation is highly complicated and even ITBP Deputy Inspector General APS Nimbadiya recently said that they want to make the rescue operation safe and secure.
Approving the two-team plan, the Pithoragarh district administration aims at completing the operation before the start of Monsoon.
The land search and rescue operation was launched after an air rescue operation failed to materialise due to bad weather and avalanche hitting the area where the bodies were lying.
Negotiating challenging weather condition and terrain, the rescue teams will be conducting one of the most complicated search and rescue operations in the history of Indian mountaineering.
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