Posted: Jun 30, 2008 03:09 pm EDT
(K2Climb.net) A search has been ongoing for Slovak Vlado Plulík, 45, on Broad Peak over the weekend. His climbing partner Dodo Kopold reported that Russian Valery Babanov climbed in stormy weather all the way to 2 looking for the mountaineer, whose tracks were covered by snow.

4-5 more climbers were searching around C1 while Dodo looked below. Dodo reports that Vlado was last seen descending by the Belarusian team at around 6500 meters.

Recap

Following their rest stop 300 meters below the top, seems Dodo and Vlado returned to their cache at 7200 meters to sleep on the 25th. The two climbers headed back up for the summit on Thursday morning, in very bad conditions and separated at 8 pm. Dodo continued up through a new variation of the route and reached the top at about 9 pm.

Dodo made a bivouac at 8000 meters on descent, reportedly without gear or a tent. Back at 6000 meters, Dodo called his home team, reporting he had not yet met up with Vlado. The climber said he had seen Vlado's tracks and presumed his mate was with the Belarusian team in camp 1.

The latest report

In the latest dispatch, Dodo reports that the two climbers had hoped to go for the top through a direct line over a rocky wall when conditions changed for the worse on the final summit push. They were alone; there were no fixed lines and no camps.

Deep snow and rock fall made Vlado opt for the normal route instead; the two decided they would meet up on the summit and descend together.

But Vlado decided to bivouac at 8 pm below the rocky summit, while Dodo was forced to bivouac at 8000 meters just below the main summit.

On descent the next morning, Dodo followed Vlado's tracks until 6500 meters where he lost them. He believes Vlado probably fell.
Dodo emphasizes that climbing on 8000 meter altitude is very difficult, and hard to understand for those who haven't been that high up, "Himalaya is not the Alps," he states.

Deja vu from 2007

The current situation comes only one year after Dodo lost another partner in the death zone, on Shisha Pangma in 2007.

”We separated," Dodo said back then about Marek Hudak. "Marek was a bit slower than me, but I always held for him. On summit day, I waited for him about 200 meters below the summit." Dodo said that Marek offered to descend to C2 when he couldn't keep up with Dodo on the final summit push.

50 meters below the summit, Dodo looked back and spotted Marek descending along the old, fixed lines. Taking 30 minutes for the last steps to the top; Dodo soon quickly descended in Marek's tracks. At 7600m, on a fixed line anchor-point, Dodo found Marek's ice axe. There were no more footprints. Dodo figured that Marek fell while changing from one fixed line to another.

Partner with limited high altitude experience

Marek Hudak was new to high altitude when he - together with Dodo - climbed Cho Oyu and Shisha Pangma last year. Shortly before the accident on Shisha, the two had shared two cold bivouacs on the British route for 3 days with no sleeping bags and no tents.

Vlado Plulík had previously summited Everest without oxygen in 1998 and participated in expeditions to Shisha Pangma and Kangchenjunga. The climber was also a marathon runner and had done difficult rock climbs in the Tatras. This month, Vlado and Dodo had climbed on G2 (which Dodo alone topped out), and summited G1 together before heading for the hard and lonely Broad Peak ascent.

In Dodo Kopold's 6th 8000er in only one year; there are currently no signs of Vlado Plulík on Broad Peak, "only silence" Dodo Kopold reports.

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