The climbers, Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson, were attempting to summit the 6,960-metre (22,835-feet) Ogre-II peak in the Karakoram mountain range but did not return when expected.
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Jonathan Thesenga, a spokesman for the families of the two Utah climbers, said even when conditiions improved on the mountain, an intense helicopter search resulted in no sign of the men, CNN reported.
The search has been called off for two missing USA climbers attempting to summit Pakistan’s highest peak after a rescue team failed to find any sign of them.
Citing the time that has passed and the unlikelihood the pair survived, the families made the decision to end the search.
Dempster and Adamson attempted to summit this peak previous year and barely survived a 400 foot fall onto a glacier. After an exhaustive search of the Ogre’s north face, the northeast ridge and the glacier basin between Ogre I and Ogre II, the team found no sign of the missing hikers.
Dempster and Adamson faced a almost 4,600-foot vertical to overhanging face of ice, rock and snow, Thesenga said.
Global Rescue, a travel risk and crisis management firm involved in the search, said a Pakistan military helicopter conducted flights over the the climbers’ likely locations Saturday.
The peak has only been reached once before, by a Korean team in the 1980s via a less hard route, said Thesenga, who works for Utah-based Black Diamond Equipment, which was sponsoring Dempster.
Dempster, 33, and Adamson, 34, both from Utah, are two of the most accomplished alpinists of their generation.
Adamson broke his leg after a 100-foot fall and the two fell another 400 feet while trying to get down the mountain.
USA media reported both men as being accomplished climbers, with Dempster having won the coveted Piolet d’Or alpine climbing award twice.
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“There were a couple of deciding factors in calling off the search, one was the time they had been gone – the very small amount of hope we had was gone”, he said. He last won in 2013 for a climb he did with others in the same area in Pakistan. “You use your pool of experience and common sense and intuition to help make decisions and mitigate the dangers”.
