Icelandic mountaineer John Snorri Sigurjónsson and his two companions likely reached the summit of K2 before perishing in a storm on the way down. The trio set out to summit the mountain, the world’s second-highest after Everest, last winter but lost contact with base camp on February 5, 2021. Search and rescue efforts in the following days were unsuccessful and their bodies were only found on the mountain earlier this week.
A tweet from “Team Ali Sadpara,” the Twitter account previously belonging to John Snorri’s climbing companion of the same name, revealed that Ali’s son Sajid and other climbers were transporting the three bodies further down the mountain to where they would hopefully be retrieved by helicopter at a later date. “At the moment, immediate retrieval efforts can harm the bodies as well as pose great risks to people involved,” the Tweet stated.
The team states that “as per instruments and presence of fig8 it is now confirmed that climbers had summited K2 in winters [sic] and were frozen to death due to storm on their way back.”
A memorial plaque for John Snorri has been placed at the mountain’s Gilkey Memorial. In a statement sent to media, his widow Lína Móey wrote: “John’s family wants to thank you for the warmth, support, and care that we have been shown over the past months and we would like to reiterate our sincere thanks to everyone who has taken part in the search for John Snorri, Ali, and J Pablo.”
