Beijing has sent a top-level rescue team, including national mountaineering squad coach Luo Shen and former team captain Wang Yongfeng, to the 7,294-meter-high West Peak of Mount Shisha Pagma in Tibet, where five students from Peking University died in a huge avalanche one week ago.
The Chinese Mountaineering Association said Thursday that the rescue group arrived in Lhasa, the provincial capital of Tibet, on Wednesday and is on the way to the West Peak of Shisha Pagma.
The rescuers from Beijing will join with Tibetan mountaineering team, which has already arrived at the base camp of Shisha Pagma, on Thursday and begin to climb up to help the Peking University expedition do rescue and search.
The 15-member Peking University mountaineering team set up the base camp at Shisha Pagma on July 24, and thanks to the good weather condition, they extended the route to the snow field about 6,600 meters above the sea level on August 2, and built up three camps.
The 15 students from the well-known "Mountain Eagles" mountaineering club at Peking University took a rest on August 3 due to weather changes. However, since August 4, they started their final sprint to the West Peak, which had only been conquered by two persons before, in three groups each with five students.
The group A led by team captain Lin Liqing climbed at the front and were in charge of building the route for followers. The group B contacted with the group A through a walkie-talkie at 11 on August 8-9, the group B and C did not receive any message from the group A comprising Lin Liqing, Lei Yu, Lu Zhen, Yang Lei and Zhang Xingbo, and did not find any footprints on the snow fields while climbing up.
Finally, the other two groups found the bodies of two group A members in the snow about 6,700-6,800 meters above the sea level, which obviously told that there had been an avalanche.
Since the avalanche was too big, the three missing students had no chance to survive in theory.
Due to the lack of communication equipment, it was until August 12 that local authorities got the information of the tragedy when two students got to Lhasa from Shisha Pagma.
(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2002)
