Climbers Die on Mont Blanc and Nanga Parbat

A Polish climber died after climbing Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat, officials said Tuesday. The peak is also known as “killer mountain” due to unpredictable conditions.

Pawel Tomasz Kopec was suffering from breathing problems while descending the 8,126-metre mountain with two other climbers, local police official Zahid Hussain said. Authorities said the other two mountainers were safe and returned to their base camp. Karrar Haidri, secretary of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, said he had also received a report about Kopec’s death. Haidri also said that a Pakistani mountaineer, Asif Bhatti, was stranded because of snow blindness, and that efforts were underway to rescue him.

And in France, a 62-year-old Swiss climber died on the French side of Mont Blanc after falling 300 metres while trying to rescue another team, the Italian agency ansa said on Monday. Three two-person teams left the Argentière Refuge on Sunday morning. When one of the teams began to slide down a snow slope, the Swiss man untied his rope to help, but fell and did not survive.

The team that was sliding were slightly injured, but survived. The Swiss Alpine Club published a report in March 2023 that shows the number of fatal accidents in high mountain areas decreased between 2021 and 2022 from 131 to 109 deaths.