HIMALAYAN HORROR

Climber Plunges 5,000 Feet to His Death in Disturbing Mountain Mystery

The seasoned mountaineer vanished from his high-altitude tent.

#7

An experienced mountaineer died after plunging roughly 5,000 feet down a sheer Himalayan peak under mysterious circumstances, just one day after successfully reaching the summit. The tragedy unfolded on Ama Dablam, a notoriously steep mountain in Nepal’s Khumbu region. Wolfgang Waschiczek, a 57-year-old climber from Germany, was resting at Camp 3 at an elevation of 20,300 feet following his successful Sunday summit run. On Monday morning, his personal guide, Sonam Lama, stepped away from the tent for a few minutes to return borrowed equipment and told the climber to stay inside. When the guide returned, Waschiczek was gone. A Sherpa later spotted Waschiczek’s body near Camp 2, about 4,900 feet below, around 8 a.m. on Monday. “After a successful summit, he spent a night at Camp 3 on Sunday, and on Monday morning, his guide found him missing,” Gokul Thapa, head of the trekking company Real Himalaya, said. A rescue helicopter retrieved Waschiczek’s body that afternoon and transported it to Lukla before transferring it to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu for an autopsy. Officials plan to hand the body over to family members through the embassy.