Nepali teams retrieve bodies of Russian climbers

Nepali rescuers dangling from a rope beneath a helicopter swooped in to retrieve the frozen corpses of five Russian high-altitude climbers killed earlier this month, mountain officials said Wednesday. The five Russians went missing on Oct 6 during an attempt to summit the world’s seventh-highest mountain Dhaulagiri, an 8,167-meter Himalayan peak.

Bad weather delayed efforts to collect the bodies, which lay on an icy slope about 7,000 meters high. “The five bodies have been retrieved through a long line rescue, and were brought to the base camp,” Nima Nuru Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, told AFP. “They are now being brought to Kathmandu.”

Long line rescue is a dangerous operation used only when the terrain is too challenging for a helicopter to land, with a specialized rescuer attached to a rope. As well as the helicopter pilot, the rescue team included two mountain guides and the long line rescue specialist.

Hundreds of people from around the world travel to the Himalayas each year for the autumn climbing season in Nepal. The country is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks, and foreign climbers that flock to its mountains are a major source of revenue for the country.

Dhaulagiri’s peak was first scaled in 1960 by a Swiss-Austrian team and has since been climbed by hundreds of people.