The search for a British climber who went missing more than a week ago on the world’s ninth-highest mountain will resume on Wednesday, despite fading hopes of him and his Italian climbing partner being located alive.
Tom Ballard, 30, was climbing Nanga Parbat in Pakistan’s Kashmir region with Daniele Nardi, 42, from Italy, when the pair lost contact on Sunday 24 February.
A mountain guide who knows Ballard and climbed with his mountaineer mother, Alison Hargreaves, who died on K2 when she was 33, said that he was having “negative thoughts” about the prospect of finding the pair alive.
“I think people are getting really worried and very sad about the whole thing,” Sandy Allen told the Press Association.
A team of four Spanish rescuers arrived in the Himalayan area by military helicopter on Monday and were joined by Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara at base camp to aid recovery efforts. But aerial reconnaissance found no traces of Ballard and Nardi, which Allen said was discouraging. If the two men were still alive in a snow cave, he said, they would likely have heard the helicopter and drawn attention to themselves.
At 8,126 metres (26,660 feet), Nanga Parbat is just over 700 metres shorter than Mount Everest. It is sometimes dubbed “Killer Mountain” for the number of people who have perished on its glaciers and snowy slopes over the last century.
British climber Albert Mummery led the first ever attempt at scaling it back in 1895 but died while doing so. Ballard and Nardi had been trying to climb the Mummery Ridge, named after him.
Two Pakistani mountaineers had originally been accompanying Ballard and Nardi on their expedition, but reportedly chose to turn back on account of dangerous conditions.
“Miracles do happen and have happened in the past in such incidents,” said Karrar Haidri, secretary of the Alpine Club of Pakistan. “So we are hoping to find them.”
Stefano Pontecorvo, the Italian ambassador to Pakistan, on Tuesday posted a picture on Twitter of the area where the climbers were thought to be and said that the search would continue on Wednesday “both by foot and with the drones”. He acknowledged, however, that the search operation was “very risky”.
A shortage of food and liquids can quickly prove lethal to mountaineers climbing in hostile conditions. Dehydration increases the risk of frostbite and liquids are also needed to avoid pulmonary and cerebral oedema – or brain swelling – at such high altitudes.
Ballard was born in Derbyshire and moved to the Scottish Highlands in 1995. His mother became the first woman to conquer Everest unaided just months before her death.
By Tuesday evening, friends of Ballard and Nardi had raised more than €137,000 (£118,000) through a GoFundMe page with a target of €150,000 to support the search efforts.
Allen said that Ballard and his mother were “very popular people”.
“He was a little bit quiet, kept to himself, had some secret projects that he kept quiet, like all us climbers, but he was sociable and popular. I think most people liked him a lot,” Allen added.
Ballard and Nardi had commenced their climb on 22 February and reached the fourth base camp on 23 February. The duo last made contact from an elevation of around 6,300 meters on 24 February.
