Mt. Everest 2005: Marko Lihteneker now "missing" on Everest

Area after the summit pyramid ©EverestNews.com 2004

A plea for help from the 7 Summits Club expedition: "After leaving the last camp, 8300 meters, at 02.30 they climbed through the increasingly worsening weather. This afternoon at 13.00 China time they reached the summit while the wind was picking up again....

Victor called back in from camp 3, 8300m, but has let us know that he lost track of Marko during the descent in the bad weather. Victor is waiting for him in camp, one of the Sherpas has joined him and will be climbing higher in search for Marko."

When we talked with Ryan Waters with SummitClimb earlier today, We had heard from others that Marko had not made it back to high camp (camp 3) yet. Ryan was unaware of any climbers having a  problem. We asked Ryan to radio high camp (camp 3) and send a Sherpa around to look for him. The Sherpas would be too wasted to go back up to the summit in a search, after just  summiting. Ryan said he would. Let's pray Marko made it down, but stopped short of his tent or went into another tent. Several climbers have done this in the past....

Previous Update

Update May 21st, 2005: The report: "Two Slovenian climbers, Marco and Victor, summited Everest this morning. I don't know what team they are in but they definitely summited."

Second report: "Two climbers from Slovenia - Marko Lihteneker in Viktor Mlinar which are members of Russian commercial expedition (leader Alexander Abramov) came from north side on the top of the planet Earth at 12.30 PM (Chinese time)."

They were of course with Alex's 7 Summit Expeditions team (commonly called the Russian Team). Vladimir Lande has some problems around the Second Step and had to turn around!

Marco Lihteneker has not made it back to high camp (camp 3) yet. Victor Mlinar has made it back to high camp.

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