One day after Sherpa climbers opened the route on Kangchenjunga, there is already an emergency situation on the mountain. Two climbers halted at around 8,400m during their descent, stricken by a combination of altitude issues, hypothermia and snowblindness.
As on Annapurna recently, ex-Ghurka Nirmal Purja and his team have found themselves involved in the rescue. His Project Possible team, looking to summit every 8000’er in seven months, flew over to Kangchenjunga from Dhaulagiri and summited the mountain yesterday morning. They came across the ailing climbers during their descent.
Rescuers are now moving the climbers down to Camp 4, where they will spend the night. Tomorrow morning, they will descend to Camp 2, where helicopter evacuation should be possible.
In a twist, both struggling climbers subscribe to Global Rescue, the same service that covered Wui Kin Chin on Annapurna. Once again, the company will liaise with Nirmal Purja to try and save a client’s life. The Annapurna emergency ended with finger-pointing, confusion and ultimately Chin’s death.
Updated 1am GMT: The two ailing climbers have since perished.
