“Denis is back in Base Camp — alive!” So reads a short SMS just received from Broad Peak. In a later text to RussianClimb, Urubko said that he had been caught in an avalanche, which cut the fixed rope and carried him 100m down, luckily stopping just 50 meters shy of a crevasse.
Urubko launched a winter summit push on Broad Peak yesterday, despite high winds and the fact that he is the last remaining climber in the whole Baltoro area. According to his plans, he hoped to reach 7,000m yesterday and then summit today. In order to achieve such a feat, he would have to battle not only the weather but also some heavily crevassed areas and the long summit ridge, totally on his own.
Winds at the time of the accident were 80kph, Urubko reported in a brief text to his partner, Pipi Cardell. He seemed to suggest that the close call had ended his winter Broad Peak ambitions: “I fighted, that’s enough.”
