The rescue of the Spanish mountaineer killed in the Himalayas is complicated

• Tragedy: A Spanish mountaineer dies in the Himalayas

This Friday marks a week of the death of Zaragoza mountaineer Fernando 'Nano' Sánchez Grassa , 44, while descending from Himlung peak (7,126 meters) of the Himalayas in Nepal.

However, for now, it has not yet been possible to articulate the rescue operation of the mountaineer's body due to the bad weather conditions, the lack of personnel in the base camp before the end of the season of ascents to Himlung, and the difficulty of access by helicopter to the altitude where it would be between 7,000 and 6,000 meters.

Family and friends considered the possibility of opening an account to cover the cost of rescue and repatriation. However, this initiative has not yet been launched at the behest of the Spanish embassy in India, which also addresses issues concerning Nepal, which would have warned of the existing complications still costing the operation.

'Nano' Sánchez was in the company of two of his best friends, the twin brothers Juan Carlos and Jesús del Cerro Millán, who were taken to a hospital in Kathmandu, where one of them was treated for hypothermia in the hands and feet.

They are well and their intention is to advance the return to Spain, originally scheduled for November 16.

A surprise for 'Nano'

There is a circumstance that the twins had given the friend a surprise expedition, because they wanted to travel again and climb the three together a sietemil.

The three Aragonese, from the Zaragoza neighborhood of Torrero, were part of an eight-member expedition that arrived in the area in mid-October in order to climb to the top of the Himlung. Although, they were left alone, after the abandonment of the other five when they began to ascend the peak.

Sánchez and the Del Cerro brothers knew each other well and wanted to get it, especially since Nano was the second time he was going to try to reach the top.

In the descent, Sanchez alerted his two friends that he was affected by snow blindness, after which he would soon die in the vicinity of Camp III, as noted by the agency organizing the expedition, due to exhaustion.

Nano had been climbing for more than twenty years and had lived in the town of Aragüés del Puerto for about three years, where he had a mountain guide company.

He was an experienced mountaineer with summits in the Pyrenees, the Andes and the Alps, such as Aconcagua and Montblanc.

With a Kurdish flag

Sanchez was a fervent activist for social causes, which led him to make several solidarity trips to Syria and was once arrested in Iraq.

It was linked to the demands of the Torrero neighborhood movement. He was one of eleven young people who perched on the roof of the old prison in the neighborhood in January 2011 as a protest to the eviction order of the City of Zaragoza.

As a mountaineer, he also participated in environmental causes. One of the most media was produced in 2007, when Nano and Jesús del Cerro camped several days at the top of Anayet to demand greater protection of the place.

A gesture of solidarity has also been the fact of climbing the Himlung with a Kurdish flag, as has now been known through various Turkish and Kurdish media, cited by Heraldo de Aragón, including the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation.

According to these sources, the intention of the mountaineer would be to draw attention to the situation in Kurdistan, because of the conflict that is developing in Syria, one of the four states between which it is divided along with Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

And it would have managed to deploy the teaching on top, as can be seen in one of the images spread on social networks.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project