West Bengal climber goes missing after scaling Mount Makalu

KOLKATA: A day after two West Bengal mountaineers went missing on Kanchenjunga, climber Dipankar Ghosh too went missing while coming down from Mount Makalu, the fifth highest peak in the world.
Primary rescue efforts by sherpas were unsuccessful and Ghosh was traceless until late Friday evening. Rescue operations for the missing climbers on Kanchenjunga started on Friday afternoon.
Ghosh (53), who has undertaken 47 expeditions in the Himalayan range, including Mount Everest and Mount Lhotse, was climbing down from the summit of Mount Makalu on Thursday when he asked his sherpa to carry on. "It was around 8.30pm when he climbed down to the 8,300 metre level. He was walking a bit slow. They did not notice anything unusual about him, so they continued to climb down to Camp IV," said Mingma Sherpa, chairman of Seven Summit Treks, the handling agency for Ghosh.
The sherpa, however, started getting anxious after waiting for a while at Camp IV. "He started searching for Ghosh along with four other sherpas. But Ghosh could not be found even after they searched for five hours," Mingma said.
In Bally, Ghosh's friends were trying to gather help to mount a rescue operation. "We are trying to get some help. Till then, we can only pray for him," said Jaydip Ganguly, member of Uttarpara Amarendra Vidyapith, the school where Ghosh studied. "He lost fingers of both hands to frostbite during Mt Lhotse climb. It was difficult for him this time," Ganguly added.
Meanwhile, rescue operations for Kuntal Karar and Biplab Baidya, who went missing on Tuesday, began on Friday afternoon. "They (sherpas) are likely to reach Camp II by tonight and Camp IV by tomorrow morning. Kuntal and Biplab were last seen at distances of 3.5 hours and 7.5 hours from Camp IV," said a friend of Karar.
Questions, however, have begun to be raised about the logistics provided to Karar and Baidya after Nirmal Purja, a climber, posted on Facebook an account of his meeting with the duo. "While descending, we met an Indian climber (Biplab) at 8450m with his guide. Both had ran out of oxygen and needed rescuing. We gave them our spare O2 and started the rescue mission... After descending 150m, we found another climber (Kuntal), who was left behind by his guide and his team," Purja posted.
While he was told that three sherpas were coming for the rescue from Camp IV, none did. Finally, Purja had to leave.
Two other climbers in the Kanchenjunga group - Ramesh Roy and Rudraprasad Haldar - were on Friday morning brought back to Kathmandu and admitted to hospital. While both are reportedly suffering from frostbite, one of them has suffered snow blindness. "They were brought to Kathmandu around 9am," said Keshab Paudiyal, chairman of Peak Promotion, the handling agency for the two climbers.