As I found out just today, I have probably taken the last picture of three climbers only minutes before they died on the wall of Artesonraju. This was when I was climbing Pisco more than a week ago. They were barely visible in the far distance but William, our guide, had spotted them with his impressive eye-sight.
I had a look through my pictures again and found one where they are just visible. Minutes later they were nowhere to be seen anymore. William was quite concerned then, but there was nothing to be done. The only way to disappear that quickly from the middle of a 900m ice wall is by falling down. A most horrible tragedy which is the talk of the town at the moment. Their bodies have just been recovered from a crevasse at the bottom of the mountain yesterday.
I have uploaded the picture
here.
There is some news on the accident on the internet
here,
here, and
here.
