Three days after the record-breaking summit day on Annapurna I, three Russian climbers have been rescued from mountain distress at the eight-thousander in western Nepal. Chhang Dawa Sherpa of Nepalese expedition operator Seven Summit Treks shared on Instagram that the three Russians were brought to base camp by helicopter long line rescue. According to his words they are all well and are now being flown on a hospital in Kathmandu. They reportedly suffered from minor frostbite.
On Sunday, contact with Sergey Kondrashkin, Alexander Luthokin and Dmitry Sinev was lost. According to the newspaper The Himalayan Times, Kondrashkin and Sinev had reached the 8,091-meter-high summit, Luthokin is said to have given up above 7,000 meters. The trio was eventually discovered above Camp 3 (6,600 m) and rescued by helicopter.
There are reportedly current problems with the Internet connection at base camp, so it has not yet been confirmed that everyone else has returned safely to base camp. Last Friday, at least 67 climbers had reached the summit of Annapurna – a record summit day on this eight-thousander.
Incident in the Khumbu Icefall
A rescue helicopter was also deployed on Mount Everest today. The Canadian climber and filmmaker Elia Saikaly reports on Facebook about an incident in the Khumbu Icefall in which a climber was injured this morning local time. “Thankfully, the injured person is going to be ok. It was a highly coordinated effort on the part of many to evacuate the injured person by helicopter from the upper icefall by long line”, writes Elia. “There are some incredibly exposed areas in the Icefall this year, this is one of them.”
