A veteran French mountaineer goes missing in Nepal Himalayas

January 31, 2006
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Jean Christophe Lafaille—a French mountaineer who was on a mountaineering expedition to climb 8,463 meters high Mount Makalu– has been missing for the past three days, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation said in Kathmandu Tuesday.

A helicopter was flown to the Makalu region to find Lafaille but his whereabouts could not be known, officials said.

Lafaille last spoke to his wife and manager Katie via satellite phone on Thursday, when he was camped at an altitude of 7,600 metres on the eve of his bid for the summit of Mt Makalu, a French news agency AFP reported today.

Mount Makalu is Nepal’s only 8000m mountain that remains unclimbed in winter.

“It’s of great concern to us. This was a solo climb,” AFP quoted Mohan Singh Chhetri, general manager of Asian Trekking, which organised Lafaille’s expedition, as saying. Chhetri said the agency has contacted the French embassy in Kathmandu about possible rescue options.

“No rescue is possible past 7,000 meters,” the news agency quoted a source who asked not to be named. “Choppers can’t go that high and small planes are no use.”

Katie Lafaille initially believed that her husband had failed to call because of a low battery on the satellite phone, Chhetri said. “We have received e-mails from her. She will be coming to Kathmandu to go to the base camp,” he added.

Lafaille has previously scaled 11 peaks above 8,000 meters and has made at least once dramatic reappearance in the past, when he was given up for dead on the south face of Mount Annapurna. In 1992, he first began to scale the Himalayas with a climb on Annapurna with Pierre Beghin, who suffered a fatal accident at 7,000 meters, the news report said.