Hungarian mountaineer goes missing during expedition to Mount Trishul in Uttarakhand
The missing mountaineer, Peter Wittek , was part of a six-member mountaineering expedition to Mount Trishul between September 13 and October 8.
A 37-year-old Hungarian mountaineer has gone missing during an expedition to the 7120-metre-high Mount Trishul located in the Garhwal Himalayas in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, said a State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) official.
The missing mountaineer, Peter Wittek , was part of a six-member Singaporean-Vietnamese-Hungarian-Mauritian mountaineering expedition to Mount Trishul between September 13 and October 8, said SDRF officials
Nand Kishore Joshi, district disaster management officer in Chamoli, said that an 8-member team of SDRF left for Mount Trishul on a search and rescue mission on Monday morning.
“The agency coordinating the expedition informed us today that a Hungarian mountaineer Peter Wittek has gone missing in Mount Trishul area from Camp 2. A six member team had gone for the mountaineering expedition to Mount Trishul area. But one member of the team has gone missing. The rest of the five members are also searching their missing member,” he said.
Joshi said that the 8-member SDRF team will reach the base camp of Mount Trishul by evening and start rescue mission with rest of the team members of the mountaineering expedition. “The area has difficult terrain. We are unable to have regular phone contact with the rescue team at present. The last report we got is that it has reached Nandprayag area, ” he said
He added another SDRF team with high altitude equipment will leave for rescue mission on Tuesday. “The team that has been sent today includes veteran mountaineers who have climbed Mount Everest , , Mount Baghirathi, Mount Santopath and mostly recently Mount Trishul on September 16,” he said.
In June this year eight mountaineers heading for the summit near Nanda Devi East in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh met with an accident during an avalanche. Nanda Devi is the second highest mountain in India and 23rd-highest peak in the world. Bodies of seven of the eight mountaineers were retrieved by ITBP search team, while one still remains missing.
Twelve mountaineers on their attempt to climb Mount Nanda Devi East were on an expedition in Pithoragarh district since May 13 onwards. On May 30, 2019, the Pithoragarh district administration got a SOS call. ITBP was requested to search for 8 mountaineers who were reported missing since May 26. The bodies were finally retrieved on June 23 after a 500-hour operation in high altitude in a retrieval mission, codenamed ‘Daredevils’.
The bodies were traced at an altitude of 18000 feet in the bowl below the peak they were attempting to climb.