This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A climber who split from his team during an expedition on K2, causing fears that he might try to ascend the world’s second-highest peak alone, has returned to base camp because of bad weather, a tour operator has said.

Denis Urubko, 44, had been attempting to climb the peak with a group of Polish mountaineers when he left a base camp on Saturday without his team-mates, leaving his radio behind.

People close to the expedition said Urubko, a highly experienced Russian-Polish climber, had been arguing with the others in the group and was growing increasingly frustrated at the pace of the ascent.

“He has had a heated debate with the team leader and left for the summit without saying a word,” a K2 porter told Agence France-Presse.

The group had aimed to be the first to complete a winter climb of the 8,611-metre (28,251ft) peak, the tallest in the Karakoram mountain range that spans the borders of Pakistan, India and China. The winter season officially ends on 28 February.

Krzysztof Wielicki, the head of the expedition, said on Sunday: “What Denis has done is very selfish.

“Denis thinks it’s all about just him, but it’s not. He has put us all in danger. If something goes wrong, of course we must try to rescue him.”

Adam Bielecki, another climber in the group, said he had been advising Urubko to rest and wait for better weather before attempting to reach the peak. “He went alone,” Bielecki tweeted. “I’m worried about him very much.”

These fears were dispelled on Monday when a touring company involved in the trek said Urubko had appeared again at base camp, located at about 6,700 metres.

He was forced to return to the camp because of a combination of weather conditions and an icy track, said Asghar Ali Porik, the head of Jasmine Tours.

The team appeared to have patched things up, Porik added, electing to wait out the poor weather and try to continue the climb soon.

Urubko and Bielecki were involved last month in an operation to rescue Elisabeth Revol, a French mountaineer who had become stuck on Nanga Parbat, a peak in the Pakistani Himalayas.

The men were flown with others from K2 to a camp on Nanga Parbat, from which they ascended more than 1,000 metres at night and without ropes to find Revol. They could not reach her Polish climbing partner, Tomasz Mackiewicz, who was injured and is presumed to have died.

K2 is regarded as one of the world’s most challenging climbs, with many expeditions ending in death. Eighty-four climbers have died on the mountain and 306 have reached the summit.

Three other expeditions have tried to climb the mountain in winter – in the late 1980s, in 2003 and in 2012 – but none managed to go higher than 7,650 metres.

K2 is the only one of the 14 8000 metre peaks to remain without a winter ascent - making it a prized goal - with Everest first climbed in winter in 1980 and Nanga Parbat, which was also unclimbed in winter until recently, receiving its first winter ascent two years ago.

Despite that winter ascents of any of the 8000ers remain very rare with only a handful of winter ascents of Everest out of some 5000 successful summits.

Winter ascents are doubly difficult and perilous with the ever present risk of high winds, bone chilling temperatures and the briefest and most fickle of weather windows.

Associated Press contributed to this report