An expensive rescue mission is reportedly underway to recover three men stuck atop Uluru after climbing the Australian landmark.
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It took crews nearly 12 hours to bring them to safety.
While climbing the rock is not illegal, a statement from the Anangu tells climbers it’s “a really important sacred thing” for their people, adding “we ask you to respect our law and culture by not climbing Uluru”.
Three climbers were rescued after becoming stuck on Uluru.
“It’s warm during the day but once the sun disappears – it gets quite chilly”, he explained. Police said there were no injuries.
“It is huge effort for the NTES volunteers”.
The Anangu also point out that the highly risky climb-which is prohibited over the summer months due to extreme heat-has led to many deaths.
A medical team assessed them after their hours-long ordeal, and a spokeswoman said that although the men were hungry, they had plenty of water with them and weren’t dehydrated. “It’s wear and tear on equipment and it does cost a lot of money”.
Despite the polite request, and similar advisories on many UIuru travel websites – here, here, here and here – thousands of people climb Uluru each year.
“So our guys had to start from the top of the rock to where they were and pluck them off, now while that sounds very easy, it’s actually very arduous and very hard”, Ms Barker said.
The technical officer with Telstra said he had chosen not to climb Uluru himself.
“My son is in a wheelchair, which would have made it challenging, but we wouldn’t have wanted to anyway because there are signs there saying the local indigenous people would prefer you not”, he said.
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When they arrived on the ground, the men found themselves to be victims of intense (fairly warranted) mocking from Twitter users, who were incensed that they’d ignored the wishes of the Uluru’s traditional owners.
