Two exhausted and distressed climbers remain stranded near the summit of Denali, North America’s highest mountain, as bad weather stops rescuers from reaching them, the National Parks Service has said.
A team of three climbers, all from Malaysia, climbed the remote, 23,310-foot peak in Alaska earlier this week and sent a distress signal on Tuesday night “following an extended summit push that left their team exhausted and hypothermic,” the NPS said in a statement Thursday.
One of the party, aged 48, was able to climb down to a camp at 17,200 feet where he was found and evacuated in a serious condition — but the others, aged 36 and 47, have been sheltering in a crude snow cave at 19,600 feet since Tuesday night, the NPS said.
Clouds and high winds have prevented NPS rescuers from going any higher to reach the stranded climbers. A helicopter also remains on standby for if the conditions improve.
The group had used an InReach emergency satellite communicator to contact authorities at 1 a.m Tuesday. They said they would descend to a flat area below the summit known as the “football field.”
But contact stopped at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning and no more messages were sent until 10 p.m. Wednesday when five arrived in quick succession confirming their location and asking for help. The last message warned that their communicator’s battery was almost depleted.
Denali National Park spokesperson Paul Ollig told the Associated Press this week that all three climbers had experience of international high-altitude peaks.
Ollig said it was likely the two stranded climbers only had “minimal” survival gear, as climbers typically leave some equipment at a lower camp while attempting to reach the summit.
NPS rangers also treated two other climbers from another Denali expedition for frostbite this week.
The Denali National Park and Preserve ranges over 6 million acres and is about 240 miles north of Anchorage.
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