He hit the goal of life just before he died, The first disabled mountaineer to conquer all 14 peaks of the earth above 8,000 meters, the South Korean Kim Hong-bin, was swallowed by a crevasse after climbing Broad Peak, the 12th highest mountain on earth (8,047) on the border between China and Pakistan, in the Karakoram range, a few kilometers from K2.
Kim, 57, had all her fingers amputated from frostbite while climbing Mount Denali, Alaska in 1991. The 6,190-meter-high peak, then called Mt. McKinley, is the largest. of North America. It might have been his final setback, the end of his dreams, but he wasn’t the type to give up. And he faced, without his fingers, challenges that would have made anyone give up.
On Sunday he reached the summit of Broad Peak at 4.58pm. After a night spent in Camp 4 he began the descent along the Chinese side while bad weather was raging, but he fell for about fifteen meters into a crevasse at an altitude of 7,800 meters. After the alarm raised by his team, the searches were immediately triggered, but it was immediately understood that the situation was dramatic.
“We think he’s dead. No human being could survive that long, ”Sifat Khan, a Pakistani government official, told AFP hours later. As reported by MountainBlog, the distress call launched by the group’s comrades was picked up by the Russian expedition of Anton Pugovkin and Vitaly Lazo who was at Camp 3 after having given up climbing to the summit due to bad weather conditions. But Lazo’s attempt didn’t help. After five hours the staff of the Russian climber spread a message: “Kim didn’t make it.”
The expedition was scheduled for last year but was later postponed due to the pandemic. It finally left on June 14 and was made up of six people, writes the Korea Herald. The base camp was set up at 4,800 meters above sea level and, despite the bad weather, reached the summit after four days of climbing.