Japanese Climbers missing on K2
A pair of Japanese mountaineers, Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima, have gone missing on the world’s second-highest mountain, K2 (8,611 meters).
ExplorersWeb website shared the initial news, citing drone operator Thibaut Marot, who is at the mountain’s base camp and shared the alarming news online today. It should be noted that there is currently no official confirmation from Japanese media.
Kazuya and Kenro planned to ascend the western face of K2 this summer. Their goal was to establish a new route in pure alpine style! It has been reported that they began their ascent from the base camp three days ago.
After a long wait (several weeks) for better weather, the Japanese climbers sent a text message to their team on July 24: “It was raining at 4:30 AM, but we are still heading to the advanced base camp, hoping for a last chance to summit.”
According to Marot, a Pakistani military helicopter is currently flying over K2 searching for Hiraide and Nakajima.
Yesterday evening, July 27, the rescue helicopter spotted the figures of Hiraide and Nakajima on the western face of K2. It appears that both climbers fell from the wall at an altitude of 7,500 meters. According to rescuers who saw them from the helicopter, the two Japanese climbers are not moving, and their condition is unknown. The rescue helicopter cannot land at this altitude due to the extreme height.
Meanwhile, a ground rescue team will attempt to reach them as quickly as possible…
Kazuya Hiraide
Japanese mountaineer, 45-year-old Kazuya Hiraide, has three of the highest awards in mountaineering – the “Piolet d’Or” (Golden Ice Axe) – but he still claims that he is not a technical climber.
His routes, opened in pure alpine style on impassable walls, are bold, direct, and terrifying. They ascend the peaks of such beautiful mountains that it is hard to imagine how no one had climbed those routes before. Then you check the difficulty of his routes, and it becomes clear. Most climbers simply would not dare to take on such lines.
Hiraide, born among the Alps of Nagano, was not meant to be a climber. He has summited Everest three times, as well as some other eight-thousanders, but he hardly mentions them. He doesn’t even include them in his climbing resume. “I was working [as a guide], not realizing my dreams,” Hiraide explained. But a summit is a summit, right? “Yes, but it’s not the summit that matters, it’s the process.”
