Frostbitten Italian survivor reaches K2 base camp

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Hobbling on frostbitten feet, an Italian climber walked down to K2 base camp on Tuesday after heavy mists ruled out an airlift for the last survivor of the worst disaster on the world's second-highest mountain.

"I'm at base camp. I'm truly happy, to be here finally and to be alive," 37-year-old Italian climber Marco Confortola was quoted as saying after speaking by satellite telephone to the Italian mountaineering website www.montagna.tv.

"I now realise that they're all dead, they're all dead."

Eleven climbers from Europe, South Korea and Pakistan died, mostly as a result of an ice fall during their descent after summitting the 8,611 metre (28,240 foot) peak late on Friday.

Some fell to their deaths, others froze, and some went missing in the freezing thin air above 8,000 metres, known to mountaineers as the "Death Zone" as the body and brain begin shutting down due to lack of oxygen.

Confortola refused to give in, and a rescue party made up of an American climber and Pakistani high-altitude porters raced up the steep flanks of the towering pyramid of rock and ice on Monday to help bring him down.

They bivouaced together on Monday, Confortola's fourth night at high altitude on the mountain since Friday's calamity, and descended to a camp at 6,000 metres in the morning.

Shahzad Qaiser, Pakistan's Tourism Ministry Secretary, told Reuters that Confortola was being treated by a doctor.

"Now I just want to take off my shoes, since my feet are hurting something awful," Confortola said.

Rescuers had hoped a Pakistani army helicopter would be able to airlift him from the base camp to a military hospital in the town of Skardu, but visibility was too poor for flying.

They decided the best option was to simply walk down to the main base camp at 5,300 metres.

Mohammad Akram, vice president of Pakistan's Adventure Foundation, who liaised between the base camp and the Italian Embassy in Islamabad, spoke of Confortola's inner strength.

"He's struggling, he is weak, but he is in good spirit," Akram, a retired brigadier, said as Confortola scrambled down.

FATAL REACTIONS

A Serbian climber and a Pakistani died during the ascent on Friday before catastrophe struck on the way down for the others who made it to the top.

An ice wall sheered off, sweeping away fixed lines needed to traverse a steep gully known as the Bottleneck.

Wilco van Rooijen, the leader of one of the ill-fated teams, was ferried to the hospital at Skardu on Monday along with fellow Dutchman Cas van de Gevel.

Speaking to Reuters from his hospital bed, van Rooijen bitterly recounted mistakes made and the numbing panic that appeared to grip some climbers after they became stranded.

"People were running down but didn't know where to go, so a lot of people were lost on the mountain on the wrong side, wrong route and then you have a big problem," van Rooijen said.

He said he was screaming for people to work together, but many of them failed to react, apparently locked in their own personal struggle for self-preservation.

The dead included three Koreans, two Nepalis, two Pakistanis, a Frenchman, a Norwegian, an Irishman and the Serbian.

Technically more difficult to climb than Mount Everest, K2 is even harder to descend.

Mountaineering veterans have questioned the wisdom of an assault on the summit that resulted in some climbers reaching the top in darkness after 8:00 p.m. last Friday.

More than 70 people have been killed on K2, many on their way down from the summit. A good number came to grief at the Bottleneck.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Rome)