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Rescue Team Hunts Missing Climbers
A rescue team will set out from Qinghai Province's Golmud to search for the three missing mountain climbers in the province's Yuzhu Mountain, a local source said.
But chances of survival were called slim by Wang Yongfeng, captain of the National Climbing Team who will head the rescue mission.
Two teams from Guangdong and Beijing began to climb Yuzhu Mountain on May 6 and May 9, respectively, but sudden storms killed two of the climbers and left three missing.
Of the killed, one was from the Beijing team while the other was a member of the Guangdong team. Two missing were Guangdong team members. The other was from Beijing.
According to Wang, the rescue team will consist of more than 20 persons, including eight to 10 professional mountaineers from around the country, police officers, as well as some journalists.
The team will also take two captains of the Guangdong and Beijing climbing teams to help locate sites of the missing members.
Wang said the mission will take five to seven days.
A previous rescue team organized by Qinghai Province found the bodies of the two victims on Monday but was unable to bring them back because of the steep terrain.
"We will consult with family members of the dead on how to deal with the climbers' bodies," Wang said.
As a rule, bodies of climbing victims are buried on the accident site, according to Wang.
Zhu Jianjun, a journalist from Xinhua News Agency who will accompany the rescue mission, told China Daily he will try to describe the full process of the rescue to remind amateur mountaineers about the dangers of climbing.
However, the accident in Yuzhu Mountain seems not to have affected the schedule of another climb, in which two students from Beijing and Tibet universities will try to scale the 8,841-metre-high Qomolangma, the highest peak of the world, on May 21.
Beside Qomolangma, the Yuzhu is a much easier mountain for climbing. "But a mountain is always too emotional to be totally controlled," Wang Yongfeng said.
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