CHENGDU: The Sichuan Provincial Mountain Climbers' Association has joined the search for an Australian tourist believed missing in the province's Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

Andrew Clem Lindenmayer, 47, was last heard from in Kangding, capital of Ganzi, on May 2 when he wrote an email to his family in Australia saying that he was planning to go to the Gongga Mountain, Sichuan, area for up to seven days.

Last Friday, his family entrusted a travel agency in Sichuan to contact the association and ask for its help in locating him.

"The association published a notice looking for Lindenmayer the same day when the agency contacted us," Gao Min, deputy secretary-general of the association, said.

The notice asks anyone aware of his whereabouts to contact the local police or his family.

Gao's association last Friday asked the township governments of Liubai and Yanzigou, which are passageways to the Gongga Mountain, to look for him and ask villagers if they had spotted anyone like him.

No reply has yet been received from the two townships.

It would take people in the two townships up to three days to climb to a Buddhist temple 3,500 meters above sea level in the Gongga Mountain area to find out whether Lindenmayer was there, he said.

According to Qiu Yuning, a member of the association, two of Lindenmayer's family members have arrived in Kangding to look for him.

The Gongga Mountain, which means the highest snow mountain in Tibetan, is located in Luding, Kangding and Jiulong counties in Ganzi.

It has attracted mountaineers from different parts of the world with its highest peak, 7,556 meters tall, and more than 20 pinnacles around it which are more than 6,000 meters tall.

More than 300 foreigners explored the mountains last year, statistics from the association showed.

"In Ganzi alone, there are more than 200 mountains with peaks 5,000 meters above sea level," Liu Feng, liaison officer of the association, said.

Late last year, Charles Fowler, 52, and Christine Feld Boskoff, 39, went missing in Ganzi while climbing a mountain there. Only Fowler's body has been found, Liu said.

Anyone who knows of Lindenmayer's whereabouts is urged to contact his family via email: timlindenmayer@gmail.com, or by phone: 61 -3-9489-8037, or the Sichuan Provincial Mountain Climbers' Association 028-8558 8047 or 13981873321.

(China Daily 06/05/2007 page5)