Since Thursday, February 28th, there has been a search for Danielle Nardi and Tom Ballard on Nanga Parbat. They went missing while attempting a new route up the Mummery Ridge. To date, only a snow-filled tent in an avalanche path around Camp 3, where they were last reported, was found.

It’s hard to know what to do in these situations 7,000 miles away. So I do a lot of things…

I try to follow with interest, hoping their found, perhaps descending a whole other section of the mountain with an incredible story to tell.

I’m also the praying type, so I pray.

Actually, I have more things I try not to do:

I try not to make judgments. (“Oh, they’re gone.”) As long as there is a SAR underway, I try to stay positive. Because, what do I know. I’m not there. It’s on the other side of the earth.

They have friends and family. As Tommy Caldwell says in his book The Push, or Tim Emmet said on the Enormocast recently, only thoughts of how their demise while climbing (or wing-suiting, for Tim) would affect their family gave them serious pause and inched toward heartache. Family lives on and we live with them.

I try not to ignore it. Especially until it is resolved. These things are not trivial current events about a Chinese man-made archipelago or story of a concert on some island. It’s more akin to miner’s stuck in their mine. Except these guys were going for fun, and as professionals, let some of us 7,000-miles away live vicariously.

How do you follow these scenarios? Do they affect you?

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