Three Latvian climbers die after fall on Mount McKinley

Three Latvian climbers have died after falling on Mount McKinley in Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve, authorities and a Latvian climbing organisation have said

A fourth member of the team survived the fall and was rescued, according to the National Park Service.

The climbers were part of a seven-member expedition when four of them fell on Wednesday near Denali Pass, about 2,100 feet below the 20,310-foot summit of North America’s highest peak.

The surviving climber was rescued on Thursday from a basin at 17,200 feet and later taken by air ambulance to hospital.The National Park Service said the operation for the three remaining climbers had moved from search and rescue to recovery.

It said it does not release the names of fatality victims until 72 hours after their families have been notified.The Latvian Mountaineering Association named the three climbers who died as Inese Puceka, Vija Olte and Renars Kunigs-Salaks.

It said another climber, Mārtiņš Bilzēns, was in critical condition after the fall.

“This is an indescribably painful and irreversible loss for the entire Latvian climbing community,” the association said.

The three other members of the expedition, who were not injured, returned safely to camp after helping their teammates, the National Park Service said.

The mountain is widely known as Denali by Alaska Natives and local communities. Denali means “the high one” in an Athabascan Indigenous language.

The peak was officially renamed Denali by the Obama administration in 2015, but the Trump administration later restored Mount McKinley as its official federal name.

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