More foreign mountaineers missing

Four days after a Russian couple was buried alive by an avalanche in Sichuan Province, local rescuers are searching for four Hungarian mountain climbers reported missing Wednesday in the same snow-capped peaks of Southwest China.

The four missing climbers include two men, Peter Csizmadia, 37, a researcher, and Balazs Pechtol, 31, a computer programmer, and two women; Katalin Tolnay, 36, another researcher, and Veronika Mikolovits, a 35-year-old teacher. Their names were provided in a written statement from the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Sports, which was faxed to the Global Times.

"Following the route the Hungarian climbers recorded, the rescuers reached an altitude of 4,400 meters at 2:30 pm.
Rescuers found no traces of the missing climbers, but there were hints of several avalanches and icefalls," Lin Li, secretary general of the Sichuan Mountaineering Association (SMA), told the Global Times Wednesday.

"We reported the missing climbers to the government Monday, and sent out a rescue team of five professional climbers Tuesday," he added.

The four Hungarian began their climb up a mountain with an altitude of 6,250 meters, Lin said.

According to their registration information, the four climbers were scheduled to return to the base camp on October 31, return to Chengdu on November 4 and leave China the next day.

However, the foreigners failed to show up and no news was heard until Wednesday, he said.

"We were informed of the missing by the Sichuan authorities. We have also contacted some climbers' families in Hungary, and they are very worried," Sárközy Péter, consul general of the embassy of the Republic of Hungary in Beijing, told the Global Times Wednesday.

Source:Global Times

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