Swedish climber dies on K2: officials

Updated at: 1704 PST,  Monday, August 09, 2010  GILGIT: A mountain climber from Sweden plummeted to his death while climbing the world's second highest mountain, K2 in the Himalayas of northern Pakistan, local officials said. Frederik Ericsson was trying to conquer 8,611-metre (28,251-feet) peak but fell 1,000 metres and was buried under heavy snow, a senior government official in the town of Shigar said. "I have issued his death certificate after his guide told police that he died," said the official, Zamir Hussain. "He died some four days back," Hussain added. Police in Shigar also confirmed the death. Ericsson's Austrian climbing partners said last week that they believed he had died after falling near the summit. He was climbing with Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, who narrowly missed a bid to be the first woman to conquer all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks. According to his website, Ericsson was attempting to ski the world's three highest peaks: Mount Everest, K2 and Kanchenjunga on the border between Nepal and China. Updates on his site indicated the climbers had had warm conditions on K2 in recent days. K2 is regarded by climbers as far more dangerous and difficult to scale than Mount Everest, the world's highest peak, and has a rate of deaths to successful summit attempts almost five times as high. Italian climbers Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli were the first to scale K2 on July 31, 1954. Between then and 2007, there have been 284 successful ascents and 66 fatalities.