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Two renowned Basque climbers died buried by an avalanche in El Chaltén

2023-01-21T18:43:30.862Z


Amaia Agirre (31) and Iker Bilbao (29) came down from Fitz Roy and were buried under the snow. There are already four deaths in 20 days in the area.


Two

experienced Basque climbers

were hit by an avalanche on Thursday in El Chaltén and were presumed dead in the last few hours.

Thus, there are already

four fatal accidents involving

climbers in the last 20 days in that tourist area of ​​Santa Cruz.

They are

Amaia Agirre (31) and Iker Bilbao (29)

,

both outstanding climbers with difficult summits conquered to their credit.

Along with them was another athlete, Josu Linaza, who

was able to run and dodge the avalanche

.

Linseed tried to detect his companions among the tons of snow without success.

The three of them had been coming down the mountain

rappelling down the Afanassieff route

opened in 1979, in an area of ​​wet, unstable and exposed snow.

The athletes were

descending from the peak of the fearsome Fitz Roy

(3,405 meters), after climbing the Afanassieff route, when an avalanche literally

buried them in a crack

at a point known as "Italian Gap".

It is estimated that the avalanche was generated within the framework of the

high temperatures in the mountains

.

In the town of El Chaltén, the thermometer marked 30 degrees

on Thursday

and in the area of ​​the summits it remained at 0. A worrying temperature for those who are climbing between masses of snow that

retain their stability thanks to the extreme cold

.

Amaia Agirre was one of the promises of Spanish mountaineering.

Facebook photo

For this reason, from the El Chaltén Relief Commission, it was evaluated that it was

dangerous to go immediately to the rescue of the athletes

.

In the town, the experts

believe the lives of the climbers are lost

and the Spanish Embassy in Buenos Aires and the Consulate based in Bahía Blanca are taking steps to rescue the bodies and communicate with the relatives.

The Spanish Federation of Mountain Sports and Climbing has reported that it is in contact with the authorities in El Chaltén awaiting more information on the tragedy.

Aguirre belonged to

the National Women's Mountaineering Team

of the Spanish Federation of Mountain and Climbing Sports (FEDME).

On her side,

Bilbao was a firefighter by profession and a highly respected climber

in Durango, his place of origin.

The Fitz Roy, the mountain that the climbers were descending when the avalanche surprised them.

AFP photo

“I think

there is no hope

for the two missing.

The survivor searched for them for almost an hour without seeing any trace, and noted that the avalanche

had swept them to the bottom of a

huge crack that the glacier presents," said Dr. Carolina Codó, founder and head of the Relief Commission from El Chaltén to the Spanish newspaper El País.

And he pointed to the issue of temperature: "Right now, we have 30 degrees and the 0 isotherm is above 4,000 meters, so I can't even send anyone to look for the bodies, because it would be

putting them in enormous danger

. When When the temperatures drop, we will try to organize a small team that will assess the situation and decide if it is possible to recover the bodies.”

“The news has fallen like a stone in the town, but it is already

the third fatal accident of the season

.

A Swiss mountaineer slipped on the Standhardt Needle and we have not yet been able to recover her body and a 25-year-old North American woman died of hypothermia when she was surprised by a strong weather change at the Guillaumet Needle,” Codó added.

Christoph Klein, the 48-year-old Swiss-German who died in December in the northern area of ​​Los Glaciares Park.

“We have asked by radio and satellite messages for the collaboration of the climbers who are in Fitz Roy so that they try to find evidence of the two missing persons that will lead us to be able to search for their remains, but it is not an easy task and we do not have high hopes because they may be

buried near the surface or under meters of snow

, ”he explained.

The doctor refers to Swiss-German Christoph Klein (48) and American Cassandra Doolittle (25): both died a few days apart at the end of December in the mountains of the northern part of Los Glaciares National Park.

The campaign they are doing to recover the body of the climber Cassandra Doolittle.

Klein's body was rescued by the El Chaltén Relief Commission, but Doolittle's remains at the base of Standhart Needle.

In fact, friends of the young climber are organizing a collection on a fundraising platform to raise funds to recover the body and move it to the United States.

Bariloche.

Correspondent

ACE

Source: clarin

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