Officials in Nepal announced on Tuesday that the bodies of five Russian climbers were found on Mount Dhaulagiri I, which has a height of 8,167 meters in the Himalayas, two days after they disappeared while trying to reach the summit of the mountain.
Rakesh Gurung from the Nepalese Ministry of Tourism said that the aerial search team located the bodies at a point about 7,600 meters high from the seventh highest mountain peak in the world on Tuesday morning.
Gurung told the German News Agency (DPA): “We will hold a meeting tomorrow with the trip organizers to discuss what we should do with the bodies.” Separately, Pemba Jangpo Sherpa, managing director of the company that organized the climbing trip, confirmed the deaths.
“At 11 p.m. local time (0515 GMT:) on October 6, they informed the base camp via radio that they would descend from an altitude of 8,000 meters, saying that it was too late to reach the summit… That was the last we heard from them,” Sherpa said. He added that the group was climbing the slopes known as alpine climbing without relying on support from guides. The actual cause of death is not yet known, but Sherpa suggested that the climbers may have slipped during the descent.
Tourism Ministry officials also pointed to the severe snowstorms witnessed in the Himalayas in Nepal in recent days, which could have contributed to the accident.
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