Search efforts for Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson, American climbers missing in Pakistan, have been called off. Photo: Instagram
An unsuccessful search effort in Pakistan for American alpinists Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson has left the climbing community reeling. On Saturday, two helicopter search flights of the Ogre, the 23,000-foot mountain in the Karakoram range the pair was attempting to climb, and a search party on foot, turned up nothing.
“In light of those extensive yet unsuccessful efforts…there remained a very slim chance that any evidence of their passage would be revealed in subsequent sweeps of the mountain,” said Jonathan Thesenga, a Black Diamond spokesperson, in a statement.
Dempster, 33, and Adamson, 34, left basecamp on August 21, and were last spotted high on the notorious peak on August 23 before a long storm socked it in.
Climber Renan Ozturk took to Facebook, saying:
“I’ve been in that position of trying to climb a Mtn and it being worth dying for… I still believe they will appear from the void but in their absence I’ll turn to @jthesenga who understood it more than most: “There’s a lot of love in this world. And, unfortunately, a lot of loss. This week we lost Kyle and Scott who many, many people loved.”
Here’s a sampling of the outpouring of support and memories on social media from those who knew them:
Many climbers knew the pair only through articles and photos in climbing publications. But Dempster’s video of his 2011 solo bicycling and climbing expedition in Kyrgyzstan, viewed 250,000 times, gave the world a very personal look at a bold, humble, endearing climber.
