An Ecuadorian mountaineer died in the Andes of Peru while climbing Huascarán Peak, the country’s highest mountain at 6,757 meters, according to the Association of Mountain Guides of Peru.

Roberto Suárez fell on Monday August 1st in a 20 meter crack, while heading towards the top of the mountain. The victim was part of a group of four climbers. It was his companions who warned of the situation and asked for help.

The Casa de Guías brigade and the Alta Montaña police rescued the man, who was still alive, and transferred him to the hospital in the city of Huaraz, the closest to the summit. However, the climber died during the trip due to multiple injuries. “They started to lower him, his vital signs started to drop and they weren’t responding anymore,” said Martín Contreras, spokesman for the high mountain guides.

His relatives are coordinating with the Ecuadorian embassy in Lima to repatriate the body, Contreras said. According to the Association of Mountain Guides of Peru, this is the first mountaineer killed this year in Huascarán.

Climbers from various parts of the world and tourists frequent the Cordillera Blanca, as the mountain range in northeastern Peru is called, home to mountains such as Huascarán (6,757 meters) and the Huandoy (6,395 meters).

In Ecuador there was also a deceased for having gone up the Chimborazo

A Canadian died and another was injured when they were surprised by an avalanche recorded in the snow-capped volcano of Chimborazo, the highest in Ecuador, reported the security service ECU911 of the city of Riobamba (south).

The agency said in a statement that a man who identified himself as a 24-year-old Canadian called by phone to report the accident, in which his companion died, of the same nationality and aged 25. He added that “they were climbing” Chimborazo, a potentially active volcano with perpetual snowfall and located 130 km south of Quito.

This 6,293 meter massif is the highest in Ecuador and one of the largest in the world. Riobamba’s ECU911 said rescuers managed to find the survivor, who “is in a stable state of health”. The avalanche would have occurred more than 5,000 meters above sea level from the volcano, at the foot of which are the cities of Riobamba and Ambato, respectively capitals of the provinces of Chimborazo and Tungurahua.

The National Risk and Emergency Service confirmed on Twitter that “this morning, for unknown reasons, there was an avalanche in the snowy #Chimborazo that affected a group of climbers who were in the area. There currently has one person injured and one deceased.

He added that relief agencies are coordinating the whereabouts of the deceased. Last October, an avalanche buried 16 Ecuadorians climbing to the top of Chimborazo. Three of them died and their bodies were found, and three others are still missing.

Five months later, a mountaineer locates the bodies of two of the missing. The snow-capped mountains of Ecuador, where skiing is not practiced, attract climbers from home and abroad. In Chimborazo, about 700 meters from the summit, the remains of an Ecuadorian-flagged plane were found in 2003, which in 1976 had an accident with 59 people on board. In 2015, the remains of three climbers, possibly foreigners, who had disappeared 20 or 30 years earlier, were also found at around 5,600 meters.

With information from AFP