July 26, 2021: A Scottish climber Rick Allen died while trying to ascend the summit of Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain, according to his expedition team.
Commenting on this latest death on the world’s second highest peak, his expedition team said Allen was killed in an avalanche while trying a new path on the mountain over the weekend. His body was found on Sunday evening. “After consultation with my family and friends, this legend will be buried under Mighty K2’s feet this morning,” the Karakoram’s Expedition wrote on Facebook on Monday.
A charity for which Allen was raising money before his death also confirmed the news.
Partners Relief and Development tweeted, “Rick died doing what he loved the most and he lived his life according to his convictions,” adding that two other mountaineers involved in the expedition survived the landslide.
Allen’s death comes a week after South Korea’s Kim Hong-bin was killed after falling from a nearby Broad Peak into a crevasse. Unlike other countries, despite the corona virus pandemic, Pakistan’s borders are open and with Pakistan’s borders open and few other places to go due to the coronavirus pandemic, the country’s summer climbing season is attracting a large number of alpinists.
After the summer season, history is being made in northern Pakistan as a team of Nepali climbers has become the first team to hold a K2 summit in winter. But another winter mission of climbers including Pakistani legendary mountaineer Muhammad Ali Sadpara, faced disaster on the slopes of K2, with 5 dead and the sixth team member missing while climbing a nearby peak.
Known as the “Savage Mountain”, K2 has severe conditions – strong winds of up to 200 kilometers per hour (124 miles per hour) and temperatures falling to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit).
Unlike the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, which is has been scaled by thousands of young and old climbers, K2 is much less travelled.
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