Wednesday, June 1 2005 15:01 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: After successfully scaling Mount Everest, a member of the summit team of the Indian Air Force (IAF), Sqn Ldr S S Chaithanya, is missing following a severe blizzard, IAF said today (Jun 1, 2005).

Chaithanya and a sherpa, who were the last in the team to scale the peak on May 30, had started their descent to the Advance Base Camp almost two hours behind the first group of summiteers when the blizzard struck at about 17:00 hours (IST), an IAF spokesman said in New Delhi.

The first group, comprising Wg Cdr R C Tripathi, Sergeant N R Chowdhary and few sherpas, reached the 27,224 feet high Camp-III at 19:00 hours after scaling the summit.

However, the sherpa, who was accompanying Chaithanya, reached the camp and informed others that he had lost contact with the Squadron Leader during the blizzard.

Night search could not be carried out for Chaithanya because of the adverse weather conditions, but was launched in the morning, the spokesman said adding efforts to locate Chaithanya are on.

The IAF team had on May 30 put three climbers atop the world's tallest 8,848 metre high Mount Everest from the Tibetan north side. Tripathi, Choudhary and Chaitanya had reached the summit between 05:15 and 06:30 hours.