GILGIT: An eight-member Polish expedition team on Sunday abandoned its struggle to summit Batura Sar (7,795 meters), the 10th highest mountain in Pakistan located in the Karakoram Range, in winter for the first time.

Team leader Piotr Tomala said continued snowfall and the risk of avalanches had deterred them from continuing their mission.

According to the organisers of the expedition, two days ago the climbers were thwarted by a hurricane.

The team comprising Mr Tomala, Rafa Fronia, Wojciech Flaczy, Mariusz Hatala, Filip Babicz, Krzysztof Stasiak, Marco Schwidergall and filmmaker Oswald Rodrigo Pereira set off for Batura Sar from Hunza on Jan 20. The peak has never been conquered in winter.

Batura Sar is the next stage of preparations for the Polish expedition to K2, in 2020 and 2021.

Recently, after several hours of action, the climbers reached the height of 6,400 metres. They set up their camp-3 there and spent one night.

After a few hours of action, the team climbed to the height of 6,600 metres. Then the climbers went down to camp II, where they spent the night. On Friday the entire team returned to the base camp due to worsening weather conditions.

Currently, there is a hurricane wind blowing above, which has forced the expedition to stop climbing.

Team leader Tomala said the entire route had been buried under snow and the constant snowfall and an increasing of avalanches had discouraged them from taking any further action.

The team leader said almost a metre of snow had fallen at the base camp during the last three days, and wind was blowing at the speed of up to 100km per hour after they set up camp-3.

“We have stopped further action because the weather forecast is not encouraging for coming days,” Mr Tomala said.

The climbers along with 40 local porters will start descending from the base camp on Monday.

The winter season has ended on Saturday and three international expedition teams have already abandoned their efforts to summit K2, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum. Five of the climbers were injured during their adventure.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2020