DEATHS ON MT. EVEREST
A total of 304 people have died attempting to reach the summit of Mt. Everest as of 2020, including 12 in 2019 and five in 2018. The most recent years in which there were no deaths were 1977, when only two climbers reached the summit, and 2020, when climbing was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic. The first to die were seven Sherpa porters working for reckless British explorer George Mallory in 1924.
According to the 2018 edition of the Himalayan Database, the primary and most reliable source of Everest statistics, there were 8,306 summits of Everest through 2017 by 4,833 different people.As of 2017, 288 people (173 Westerners and 115 Sherpas) had died on Everest from 1924. The Nepalese side had seen 5,280 summits with 181 deaths through 2017, a death to summit rate of 3.42 percent. The Tibet side had seen 3,026 summits with 107 deaths through 2017, a death to summit rate of 3.54 percent. Most bodies are still on the mountain but China has removed many bodies from sight.
In April 2014, the ice fall collapse and avalanche on the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 Nepalese and Sherpas. The Base Camp Avalanche triggered by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal on April 2015, kill 22 climbers of all nationalities.
Deaths in: 1996 — 15, the “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer year; 1997 — 9; 1998 — 4; 1999 — 4; ; 2000 — 2; 2001 — 5; 2002 — 3; 2003 — 4; 2004 — 7; 2005 — 6; 2006 — 11; 2007 — 4; 2008 — 1; 2009 — 4; 2010 — 3; 2011 — 5; 2012 — 11; 2013 — 8; 2014 — 16, in the Khumbu Icefall avalanche; 2015 — 22 in the earthquake avalanche at Everest Base Camp; 2016 — 7; 2017 — 5; 2018 — 6, four in Nepal and one in Tibet; 2019 — 12. Some of those who in 2019 suffered cardiac arrest while waiting, stuck in a climber traffic jam, to make the final summit to Everest.
Between 1953 and 2001, about 180 people had died on the slopes of Mt. Everest. As more and more people make it to the summit more and more people are more are dying, albeit fewer on a percentage basis. As of 1988 only about 60 people died. Lately they have been dying at a rate of around 10 people a year.
Why and How People Die on Mt. Everest
Climbers die from various forms acute mountain sickness (AMS), slipping into crevasses, heart attacks while climbing, glacial ice collapses, pulmonary and cerebral edema, dysentery, crushed under a falling ice pinnacles, pneumonia, strokes, hypothermia, falling off cliffs, and being smothered by avalanches. One man even died from choking on his own vomit in his sleeping bag at base camp. Many die of “exhaustion on descent”. Some disappear and nobody knows for sure what happened to them,
According to the Himalayan Database at least 14 mountaineers died in the 2010s from AMS, a top Everest killer that causes the brain to swell and fluid to build up in the lungs. The New York Times reported: “Others died from vague conditions like “exhaustion” or accidents that might be related to disorientation from hypoxia” —deprivation of oxygen. [Source: Kai Schultz, New York Times, April 23, 2019]
Mark Jenkins wrote in National Geographic: “Many recent deaths on Everest have been attributed to a dangerous lack of experience. Without enough training at high altitude, some climbers are unable to judge their own stamina and don’t know when to turn around and call it quits. “Only half the people here have the experience to climb this mountain,” Panuru Sherpa told me. “The half without experience are the most likely to die.” Too often, it’s not the mountain’s harshness that kills climbers but their own hubris. [Source: Mark Jenkins, National Geographic, June, 2013]
Omkar Khandekar wrote in the South China Morning Post, “In places like Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania or Mount Elbrus in Russia, trekking groups have the authority to cancel or turn back from an ongoing expedition if the weather gets bad,” said Umesh Zirpe, a mountaineer from India whose Guardian Giripremi Institute of Mountaineering has led many expeditions to the Himalayas. “There are no such rules in Nepal. So you often see climbers going against the Sherpas’ better judgment.” While such grit and adrenaline have also resulted in successful summits, a crucial determining factor behind such a gamble is money. It costs anywhere between US$25,000 and US$45,000 to climb Everest, which includes the cost of equipment, transport, Sherpas and the government permit. Many raise this money through sponsorship and after dipping into years of savings. They are thus determined to complete their mission — or die trying.” [Source: Omkar Khandekar, South China Morning Post, June 16, 2019]
Everest Deaths in the Death Zone
Many people die in the "death zone" above 8,000 meters (26,247 feet), where making rescues are nearly impossible if something goes wrong. In the death zone, there is only 30 percent the amount of oxygen there is at sea levels The heart races even at rest. Climbers often have hallucinations, such as hearing music or seeing climber that aren’t really there. The body begins to break down. Even humans that are acclimatized to altitude can only stay here a short time or risk death.
Goutam Ghosh was an Indian climber who died in May 2016. John Branch wrote in the New York Times: “The last photograph of Ghosh taken with his camera appeared to be at the South Summit at 1:57 p.m. He wore an oxygen mask. He held flags and banners that he had carried in his backpack. A video recorder dangled around his neck. Ghosh turned it on. Wind whipped through the camera’s microphone, but not enough to obscure the sound of Ghosh’s quick-paced breathing. It was as if Ghosh were checking himself in a mirror. With a bare hand, he lifted his sunglasses to his forehead. His eyes were bloodshot. He pulled his oxygen mask to his chin, briefly showing his teeth and his gray-speckled mustache. “Goutam,” a voice said, and Ghosh glanced in its direction, put his mask on and reached to turn off the camera. It was the last record of him alive. Yet Gurung, Ghosh’s guide, apparently kept going, alone. About 40 minutes later, he photographed himself 21 times with Ghosh’s camera at what appeared to be the summit. There was no sign of Ghosh. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
Dr Andrew Sutherland, an Oxford-based surgeon, told the BBC: "In my view, climbers are not climbing beyond their ability but instead beyond their altitude ability. “Unfortunately it is difficult to get experience of what it is like climbing above Camp 3 (8,300 meters) without climbing Everest. “Climbers invariably do not know what their ability above 8,300 meters is going to be like. “The longer you stay up there, in the death zone, the greater the chance you have of dying." He said climbers needed to check that they were not climbing too slowly — a sign something is wrong — and turn back if need be. The slowest safe rate is around 100 meters every one to one-and-a-half hours. If progress is any slower than that, people should abort their attempt. [Source: BBC, August 25, 2006]
Many Deaths on Everest Occur Going Down
Many Everest climbers die on the way down after they have already reached the summit or reached the point where the realize they could go no further. Many of the Sherpas who died under these circumstances. "The moment of euphoria felt after reaching a summit is always a dangerous time, and many accidents happen at that point," one mountaineer told Time. Some simply get so tired from oxygen deprivation they lie down and take a nap and never wake up
According to professional climber Ed Viesturs many climbers are claimed by "summit fever," a desire to get to the top when more level headed judgement says they should turn around. Viestus once turned around 105 meters (350 feet) short of the Everest summit and says that his motto is: "Getting to the top is optional, but getting down is mandatory."
It takes about four to eight hours to descend from the summit to Camp 4. According to mounteverest.net: “Most accidents occur upon climbing down. Be sure to have enough oxygen to come back. Don't relax for one moment. The climb is tricky all the way down to the Balcony ' the final ridge before the wall back down to camp 4 and the South Col. Even the wall after the Balcony is dangerous if unroped. You will encounter a couple of bodies of deceased climbers here. [Source: Tom Sjogren, mounteverest.net]
“In 1998, the last part of the wall towards Camp Four was not fixed and 8 people took pretty bad falls. Luckily enough, all climbers survived that time. We climb this part roped to each other if the fixed ropes aren't there. If the weather turns bad, the fixed ropes might get buried or you won't be able to see them. Make memory maps on you climb up for this situation. Bring a compass. A blue ice bulge will mark the last obstacle back to camp. There are some crevasses there, usually recognizable as streaks of white snow. Avoid them. Finally, you will stumble back down onto the flat, rocky South Col. And take the last exhausted steps towards your tent, throwing yourself into it....after almost 30 hours of strenuous climb, terror and doubts.
Dead Bodies on Mt. Everest
About 200 bodies are believed to be still on the mountain. Many of the bodies are beyond reach and even when they are found they are thrown in a crevasse or covered with snow because it isn't feasible to bring their bodies down. "In 1985," filmmaker David Breashears wrote in National Geographic, "I collected body parts from two climbers I had known, who had died the year before. Their corpses had frozen solid on the mountain and shattered when they fell to the glacier below.”
Describing a Taiwanese climber who he found dead in the ice after being rescued from a crevasse, Breashears wrote: "My eyes were fixated on the figure dangling in front of me. I felt drained, overcome with sadness. The climber's eyes were wide open, his mouth agape, and his face ashen...When I reached to close his eyes, they had a look of bewilderment, as if from the shock of dying so suddenly."
Twenty bodies were discovered on the north side alone in 2003. A British climber who climbed Everest that years told the New York Times he had to maneuver around one dead climber to make his way up. “I had to crawl over his legs. He was still fully clothed, with his crampons on. It looked like he was trying to shelter under a rock, the way his feet were sticking out,” the climber said.
On his climb in 2012, Mark Jenkins wrote in National Geographic: “An hour above high camp on the Southeast Ridge of Everest, Panuru Sherpa and I passed the first body. The dead climber was on his side, as if napping in the snow, his head half covered by the hood of his parka, goose down blowing from holes torn in his insulated pants. Ten minutes later we stepped around another body, her torso shrouded in a Canadian flag, an abandoned oxygen bottle holding down the flapping fabric. Several hours later, before the Hillary Step, a 40-foot wall of rock and the last obstacle before the summit, we passed yet another corpse. His stubbly face was gray, his mouth open as if moaning from the pain of death. Later I would learn the names of these climbers: Chinese Ha Wenyi, who was 55; Nepali-Canadian Shriya Shah-Klorfine... and German Eberhard Schaaf, 61. As I cramponed past their icy corpses on my own descent from the summit, I thought of the shattering sorrow their families and friends would experience when they heard the news. I too had lost friends to the mountains. Exactly why these individuals died still wasn’t clear. [Source: Mark Jenkins, National Geographic, June, 2013]
John Branch wrote in the New York Times: “Mt. Everest occupies a rare spot in the collective imagination — a misty mix of wonder, reverence and trepidation. Hundreds of people successfully and safely reach the summit most years and return home with inspirational tales of conquest and perseverance. Other stories detail the occasional tragedies that leave a few people dead in a typical year. Those disaster stories are now their own genre in books and film. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
So Many Bodies on Everest They’re Used as Landmarks
John Branch wrote in the New York Times: A few dead bodies “are so familiar, so well preserved by the subfreezing temperatures, that they serve as macabre mileposts for the living, including one corpse commonly called Green Boots. Other bodies remaining on Everest include those of George Mallory, dating to his fatal attempt in 1924, and the guide Scott Fischer, part of the 1996 disaster depicted in “Into Thin Air.” Most of the bodies are far out of sight. Some have been moved, dumped over cliffs or into crevasses at the behest of families bothered that their loved ones were someone else’s landmark or at the direction of Nepali officials who worry that the sight of dead bodies hinders the country’s tourist trade. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
Bhadra Sharma and Kai Schultz wrote in the New York Times: “For years, an American woman who died while descending was a fixture near the summit, until a climber wrapped her body in a flag and moved it out of sight in the 2000s. The body was commonly called Sleeping Beauty. “For many climbers, the bodies are a jarring reminder of the mountain’s perils. Vibeke Andrea Sefland, a Norwegian climber, said that during her 2017 expedition she had passed four bodies, including a friend’s. “It for sure affects me,” she said. “It is very intense when you meet them for the first time, when your headlamp catches them. I always halt and give them a little prayer.” [Source: Bhadra Sharma and Kai Schultz, New York Times, May 30, 2019]
Rachel Nuwer wrote in smithsonian.com: “The body of “Green Boots,” an Indian climber who died in 1996 and is believed to be Tsewang Paljor, lies near a cave that all climbers must pass on their way to the peak. Green Boots now serves as a waypoint marker that climbers use to gauge how near they are to the summit. Green Boots met his end after becoming separated from his party. He sought refuge in a mountain overhang, but to no avail. He sat there shivering in the cold until he died. [Source: Rachel Nuwer, smithsonian.com, November 28, 2012]
“In 2006, English climber David Sharp joined Green Boots. He stopped in the now-infamous cave to rest. His body eventually froze in place, rendering him unable to move but still alive. Over 40 climbers passed by him as he sat freezing to death. His plight might have been overlooked as passers-by assumed Sharp was the already-dead Green Boots. Eventually, some heard faint moans, realized he was still alive, and, too late, attempted to give him oxygen or help him stand.
“Francys Arsentiev was the first American woman to reach Everest’s summit without the aid of bottled oxygen, in 1998. But climbers do not recognize this as a successful ascent since she never made it down the mountain. Following a rough night time trek to camp, her husband, a fellow climber, noticed she was missing. Despite the dangers, he chose to turn back to find his wife anyway. On his way back, he encountered a team of Uzbek climbers, who said they had tried to help Francys but had to abandon her when their own oxygen became depleted. The next day, two other climbers found Francys, who was still alive but in too poor of a condition to be moved. Her husband’s ice axe and rope were nearby, but he was nowhere to be found. Francys died where the two climbers left her, and climbers solved her husband’s disappearance the following year when they found his body lower down on the mountain face where he fell to his death.”
Identifying Bodies Found on Mt. Everest
Sometimes the bodies that are found can not be identified. In 2019, Nepalese officials asked for help in identifying four bodies that were recovered from Mt. Everest. Bhadra Sharma wrote in the New York Times: Mira Acharya, the director of Nepal’s department of tourism, said her office was preparing to review autopsy reports for the climbers, who were brought down from the world’s highest mountain as part of a spring trash cleanup. Officials plan to work with embassies in Kathmandu, the capital, to get in contact with relatives of the deceased climbers. “If family members do not approach us about the bodies, we will have to cremate them,” Ms. Acharya said. [Source: Bhadra Sharma, New York Times, June 7, 2019]
“The corpses were recovered from different parts of the mountain, including near the summit, and identifying them is likely to be challenging. Kul Bahadur Gurung, the general secretary of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, which was involved in retrieving the bodies, said some of them were unrecognizable. “Avalanches broke their bodies,” he said, adding that they were all believed to be foreigners and that it was unclear how long they had been on the mountain.
Climbers are often left where they fall. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to retrieve bodies high on the mountain. Sherpas involved in these dangerous missions say they sometimes have to drill out the frozen corpses, which can weigh over 300 pounds. In the last few seasons, climbers say that even more bodies are emerging from the ice. Both the climbers and the Nepalese government believe this is a grim result of global warming, which is rapidly melting the mountain’s glaciers and exposing corpses and bones of people who died decades ago.
Ignoring a Dying Climber to Reach the Summit
John Branch wrote in the New York Times:“The last time anyone saw” Goutam Ghosh “alive was on the evening of May 21, 2016, when it was obvious that he would become another fatality statistic, soon frozen and as inanimate as the boulders around him. Ghosh was a 50-year-old police officer from Kolkata, part of a doomed eight-person expedition — four climbers from the Indian state of West Bengal and four Sherpa guides from Nepal — that ran out of time and oxygen near the top of Everest. The four Bengali climbers were eventually abandoned by their guides and left to die. Three did; only one, a 42-year-old woman named Sunita Hazra, survived, as did the guides. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“To get around him, climbers and their guides, sucking oxygen through masks and double-clipped to a rope for safety, stripped off their puffy mittens. They untethered the clips one at a time, stepped over and reached around Ghosh’s body, and clipped themselves to the rope above him. Some numbly treated the body as an obstacle. Others paused to make sense of what they saw — a twisted man still affixed to the rope, reclined on the slope as if he might continue climbing after waking from his awkward slumber.
“Apparently abandoned at his time of greatest need, he was a mute embodiment of their worst fears. One climber stepped on the dead man and apologized profusely. Another saw the body and nearly turned around, spooked by the thought of his own worried family back home. Another paused on his descent to hold a one-sided conversation with the corpse stretched across the route. “Who are you? Who left you here? And is anyone coming to take you home?”
As Everest Ice Melts Due to Global Warming More Bodies Emerge
Bhadra Sharma and Kai Schultz wrote in the New York Times: “A few years ago, Kami Rita Sherpa, a veteran climber and guide, met with a gruesome sight at Mt. Everest Base Camp. Human bones poked from the ground, smooth and ice-crusted. It was not a fluke. Subsequent seasons yielded more remains — a skull, fingers, parts of legs. Guides increasingly believe that their findings fit into a broader development on the world’s highest mountain: A hotter climate has been unearthing climbers who never made it home. “Snow is melting and bodies are surfacing,” said Mr. Sherpa, who has summited Everest 24 times, a world record. “Finding bones has become the new normal for us.” [Source: Bhadra Sharma and Kai Schultz, New York Times, May 30, 2019]
“In the last few seasons, climbers say they have seen more bodies lying on the icy slopes of Everest than ever before. Both the climbers and the Nepalese government believe this is a grim result of global warming, which is rapidly melting the mountain’s glaciers and in the process exposing bones, old boots and full corpses from doomed missions decades ago. Some climbers believe that fallen comrades have become a part of the mountain and should remain so. A number of the bodies are remarkably well-preserved: Sun-bleached parkas outline faces frozen into the color of charcoal.
“Gelje Sherpa, a guide and six-time summiteer, said that when he first climbed Everest in 2008, he found three bodies. During a recent season, he saw at least twice that number. “They often haunt me,” he said. Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, estimated that the bodies of at least a third of all who have died on Everest remain there. Some of them are in pieces, pulled apart by avalanches, he said.
“Ahead of this year’s spring climbing season, which typically stretches to the end of May, Nepal’s tourism ministry asked expedition operators to compile lists of deceased mountaineers who were left on Everest and other peaks.” In 2019 “volunteers have collected more than 20,000 pounds of trash — plastic bottles, old ropes, tents, food tins — from Everest. The exercise was also billed as an opportunity to remove bodies. In April, four more unidentified people were found on the mountain....The remains had been moved to Kathmandu for autopsies. If they cannot be identified, the police will cremate them.
Rescue the Near Dead on Summit
John Branch wrote in the New York Times: “At Camp 4,” the highest on Everest, “the first group to leave for a summit attempt included an experienced American climber and photographer, Thom Pollard, and his Nepali guide. They first passed a Sherpa, then another, both cold, scared and without oxygen. Then they came across climbers below the Balcony. One was a woman. One was a man in a yellow snowsuit, lying sideways across the hill, still attached to the rope. His hands were uncovered. He appeared close to death. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“Options for would-be rescuers are few at such extreme altitudes. Climbers carry finite amounts of oxygen, just enough for their own expected need, because of the weight of the canisters. They worry about their own survival, knowing that extra time exposed to the elements can prove fatal. They are often in a depleted state, physically and mentally. Even if they have all their faculties, they have paid tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps devoted many years of their lives, to this one day, and might be reluctant to abort it all for a faceless stranger whose needs cannot be assessed easily and who, most likely, speaks a different language. Pollard and his guide stopped, discussed the situation and continued past. “I’ve wrestled with this for a year,” Pollard said from his home in New Hampshire.
“Pollard and his guide were the first to summit on the morning of May 22, at 2:40 a.m. On their descent, still in the dark, they were relieved to see Hazra was gone. There were marks in the snow where she had either scooted downhill or been dragged away. But Ghosh was still there, splayed on the slope and now alone. “He was dead,” said Pollard’s guide, Lhakpa Gyaljen Sherpa. “I shouted: ‘Hello, hello!’ There was no response. Looking at his face, he was dead. That’s why the others must have left him.” Like everyone else who went up and back for the remaining days of the season, they stepped over him, clipped out of and back onto the rope around him, and continued down.
“Sunita Hazra’s memories of that night are spotty, but she remembered leaving Ghosh, her closest friend on the expedition. “I told Goutam, ‘You must come,’ ” she said. “I thought if I started moving downward, he would follow me. I had neither the strength to help him or to even look behind me to make sure he was coming.” She believes she would have died, too, if not for Leslie Binns, a British climber who was ascending above Camp 4 when he found her with her mittens off and her jacket unzipped. He gave her a shot of oxygen, which lifted her energy, but soon realized she would not make it to Camp 4 on her own. He aborted his own summit attempt to drag, encourage and cajole her downhill.
“They soon discovered Subhas Paul, in a dazed and hypothermic state of his own. Binns slowly coaxed the two Indian climbers down, sharing hits of oxygen and trying to lift them when they collapsed. They lost track of the roped route. Paul fell into a shallow crevasse and flailed his arms. Binns eventually made a decision to try to save one or the other. Figuring Paul had energy to expend, he chose Hazra and escorted her to a tent. “When I got to Camp 4, Subhas was not behind me,” Hazra said. “I thought he was there. I thought Goutam and Nath were somewhere safe.”
In 2016, Mingma David Sherpa, formed a “Sherpa Rescue Team” with five others, funded by insurance companies and a television documentary crew, and offered free rescue to anyone in need. According to the South China Morning Post: Among the 52 people his team rescued in 2016, he remembers Chetana Sahu’s situation as being the most difficult. Sahu, a resident of Kolkata in India, was stranded at 8,600 meters with her Sherpa and was fast running out of oxygen. “It takes five hours to get from Camp IV to where she was,” Mingma said. “I pushed myself and did it in three. I was with her on the radio throughout, telling her, ‘Think of your husband, think of your kids’.” [Source: Omkar Khandekar, South China Morning Post, June 16, 2019]
Barely Alive and Dying During the Everest Descent
John Branch wrote in the New York Times: “Some in Camp 4 later awoke in the night to someone shouting, rhythmically but incoherently, over and over. They presumed it came from within the camp, part of another expedition. No one ventured into the dark to explore. When climbers emerged from their tents in the first rays of sunlight, they realized the shouting was from Paul, about 100 yards uphill from camp. He had been out in the elements for at least 32 hours. Hazra and Paul were reunited with their three guides in the tent. They did not know where Ghosh and Nath were. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
By midafternoon, persuaded by doctors from other expeditions to get to lower altitude immediately, the group was on its way downhill again, without Ghosh and Nath, carrying the last bits of oxygen it had stashed at Camp 4. Paul soon collapsed. “Subhas started getting very weak,” Lakpa Sherpa said. “He wasn’t getting better even after supplying oxygen. His hands froze. We tried very hard to rescue him from there.”
“Two guides stayed with Paul. The third led Hazra downward, but soon left her behind, feeling he was in worse condition than she was, suffering from frostbite on his hands and feet. Darkness came, bringing snow and wind. Alone, Hazra fell and broke her wrist. She had frostbite on her hands. Eventually, the other two guides caught up to her. “I understood from the Sherpas that Subhas sat down to rest,” Hazra said. She began to cry. “And they left him,” she said. Hazra and the guides made their way to the icy landing spot above Camp 2, where a helicopter winched Hazra to Base Camp. Ferried to Kathmandu, she was hospitalized for her injuries. A few days later, she received a hero’s welcome at the airport in Kolkata.
“She knew little of what happened behind her, up the mountain. At about the time that Paul, Hazra and the three guides left Camp 4 to descend toward Camp 3, another Indian expedition returning from the summit spotted Nath off the trail in afternoon light. He was upright and alive, mindlessly digging into the ice with his one hand. Nath was carried to Camp 4. His eyes were swollen shut with snow blindness. By the next morning, the last day that anyone would summit Everest for the season, Nath was too weak to hold a bowl of soup. He died in a tent at Camp 4. Goutam Ghosh was still somewhere higher on the mountain. At least 27 people stepped over him on their way to the summit and again on their way down before the season ended and the mountain emptied for most of a year.
Recovering Dead Bodies Off of Everest
Bhadra Sharma and Kai Schultz wrote in the New York Times:“It is very dangerous to remove remains from the top of the mountain. A frozen body can weigh over 300 pounds. To carry that extra weight over deep crevasses with precipitous drops and erratic weather would put even more climbers in life-threatening binds. Still, some families have insisted on recovering the bodies of their loved ones, which entails a separate mission that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Generally, the bodies of climbers who die above 21,000 feet are left in place. “On the mountain, everything is weighed against the risk of death,” Ang Tshering Sherpa said. “It is better to bring down the bodies if possible. But climbers should always give first priority to safety. Dead bodies can claim their lives.” [Source: Bhadra Sharma and Kai Schultz, New York Times, May 30, 2019]
John Branch wrote in the New York Times: “ More and more, families and friends of those who die on Everest and the world’s other highest peaks want and expect the bodies to be brought home. For them and those tasked with recovering the bodies — an exercise that can be more dangerous and far more costly than the expedition that killed the climber in the first place — the drama begins with death. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“When someone dies, those left behind, from climbing partners on the scene to family and friends half a world away, are immediately faced with enormously daunting decisions and tasks. The rituals, customs and logistics of what happens next are always different. There are practical considerations, including whether to search for the bodies of those presumed missing or dead, if that is even feasible, and whether to recover the body or let it rest eternally where it is. There are emotional considerations, maybe cultural and religious ones, often in the name of closure, which can mean different things to different people. There are the wishes of the deceased, if those were ever communicated. There are logistical concerns, including danger and cost, local customs and international laws. Sometimes, in some places, recovery of a body is not just wanted, it is needed, to prove a death so that benefits can be provided to a family in desperate need of financial support.
Family of the Dead Indian Climber
Branch wrote in the New York Times: “The thought of Ghosh somewhere up there — alone and frozen, or maybe wandering around the Himalayas lost and crying into the wind for help — haunted his wife, his brothers, his mother and all those who lived in the cramped home off Old Calcutta Road, hundreds of miles away. Kolkata lies on the improbably flat and vast plain of the Hooghly River, a slow and wide offshoot of the Ganges in eastern India. There is nothing, not even a hill, to poke the horizon, and the thought of a mountain like Everest feels as far away as another planet. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“And so his wife, Chandana, kept the vermilion sindoor in the part of her hair, and the red and white bangles on her right wrist, to indicate that she was a married woman. She would not remove them until she was certain she was a widow. She left the calendar on the wall of the bedroom turned to May 2016. In her mind, that was when time stopped. “I still believe he is alive,” she said in her home in February. “I am not a widow. I am the married wife to Goutam Ghosh. Not a widow. Unless I see him, and we cremate him, I will not change.”
“There were three major reasons the Ghosh family desperately wanted Goutam’s body returned. The first was emotional. The idea that he lay near the summit of Everest, alone, exposed to the elements, left to serve as a tragic tourist marker for future climbers, was nearly too much to bear. And they wanted answers about what happened. Maybe his body could provide those answers. Maybe that video camera around his neck, if it was still there and still worked, held clues. Maybe there were memory cards from his camera in his pockets or backpack. Maybe a message for the family. Something.
“The second was religious. Hindus believe the body is merely a temporary vessel for the soul. Once the soul is severed from the body through cremation, it is reincarnated in another body. Like most in West Bengal and across India, the Ghoshes were devoutly Hindu. To them, closure required a cremation, and all the ceremonies that came with it.
“The third reason, as important as the others, was financial. Legally, in India, Ghosh was considered a missing person. Only when a body was produced, or seven years had passed, would the Indian government issue a death certificate, which the Ghosh family needed to gain access to his modest bank accounts and to receive financial death benefits like life insurance and the pension he had earned as a police officer. Ghosh was a police sub-inspector, the second in command at the local precinct of the Kolkata police. It was a good job that paid about US$500 a month.
Looking for Dead Indian Climbers
John Branch wrote in the New York Times: When climbing season begins, “among the first on the slopes are Sherpas with their oxygen masks and ice axes looking for the dead” from the previous year “and figuring out how to bring them down. Everest is rarely climbed at any other time of the year. That meant the rope-fixing Sherpas were likely to be the first to see Ghosh and Nath, if their bodies were still there from the year before. The forces of wind, snow, ice and gravity could have moved them or hidden them. Nath was last seen in a tent at Camp 4, at more than 26,000 feet, which gets battered into something unrecognizable from one year to the next. Ghosh was last seen higher on the mountain, clipped to a rope on a steep section called the Triangular Face, just below the perch called the Balcony. If that rope from last year’s route was damaged — perhaps by a falling piece of ice — Ghosh’s body could have fallen and disappeared for good. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“The first they found was Paul... He was steps from the well-worn route below Camp 4, roughly 26,000 feet above sea level. He was faceup, but only the toes of his boots stuck out of the fresh snow. It took four hours to chip and pry him from his icy grave and another 12 to drag him to Camp 2, where a helicopter carried the body to Base Camp. A few days later, thousands crowded Bankura’s rough and narrow streets for a miles-long procession of Paul’s body, which was carried on the open bed of Paul’s small truck. The procession led to the banks of the Dwarakeswar River, where the body was cremated and the soul set free, according to Hindu tradition. There was heartache, but also closure.
Back on Everest, above where Paul’s body was extricated, two of the Sherpas moved up to Camp 4. At roughly 26,000 feet, higher than all but about 15 of earth’s peaks, it sits at the edge of the oxygen-depleted death zone and is the last rest stop for climbers before their final push to the summit. The Sherpas searched the abandoned tents, some shredded to ribbons by wind, until they found the body of another of the missing Indian climbers. They knew it was Nath, the tailor, because he had only one hand, the other lost in a childhood firecracker accident.
“The rope-fixing team returned down the mountain and reported seeing a body most of the way up the Triangular Face, below the Balcony — just where Goutam Ghosh’s body was last seen, about 360 days before. “I think that was the body of the Indian climber,” Chime Chundub Gurung, one member of the team, said at the airport in Kathmandu a few days later. “The body was upside down with legs up. It was very close to the new rope. I didn’t touch it, and I didn’t see the face. I only saw boots, and he was wearing mountaineering clothes.”
“The hundreds of climbers below, eager for the route to open and seeing a forecast for good weather, began to stream toward the summit. Within days, dozens reached the summit and came back again. Few of them saw Paresh Nath’s body, stashed away on a far side of Camp 4. But every one of them climbed within feet of Ghosh’s body.
“The first photographs arrived on Tuesday, May 16. Debasish Ghosh received one on his phone at 6:17 that evening while sitting at his hotel. Numbly, he stared at it, tugging the edges with his fingertips to zoom in for a better look. He sent the message to his son and to Chandana at home in Kolkata. He also sent it to Sunita Hazra, the only survivor among the four Indians in the expedition the year before. The photo showed a body in a faded yellow snowsuit bent like a horseshoe and half-buried in snow. It looked like something archaeologists were midway through excavating. There was no face visible, but the boots and the gear matched what Ghosh was wearing a year before. The pattern of the yellow-and-black snowsuit matched what Sunita had in her closet at home, the one she bought alongside Ghosh at a little shop in Kathmandu. ...Everyone agreed: It was Ghosh’s body.
“Three men from the West Bengal government rushed to Kathmandu, taking the 90-minute commercial flight that Debasish Ghosh could not afford. They quickly struck a deal with Mingma Sherpa, the owner of Seven Summit Treks, a major Himalayan expedition company based in Kathmandu. The sides agreed on a price that the government would pay for the two bodies to be recovered: US$90,000, roughly the amount the government quietly set aside weeks earlier. The government announced it would pay for the retrievals. Sabita Nath and Chandana Ghosh received calls from a government official asking them to sign a “no objection” certificate to allow for the attempted recoveries. They agreed.
Looking for a Dead Body in the Death Zone
Branch wrote: Nepal’s Department of Tourism, which oversees the country’s mountaineering trade, placed only one major provision on the operation: It did not want the bodies coming down at the same time that hundreds of climbers were going up. It was also a matter of practicality. Digging out and dragging a body off the mountain typically requires at least six Sherpas. This effort needed about a dozen people. And most of the Sherpa guides were either still on the mountain with clients, or just returning, too exhausted to turn right back around and go up. The days of waiting piled up. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“The leader was Dawa Finjhok Sherpa, a 29-year-old guide who had been to the summit of Everest five times....About 11 a.m., the retrieval Sherpas reached Camp 4, a ghost town of abandoned tents and gear so late in the season. They heated their Cokes and sipped from the plastic bottles, but did not dawdle. Once rested, the five men stood in the midday light, put on their packs, secured their oxygen masks and kept moving, up the Triangular Face toward the Balcony of Everest, looking for a frozen man who had waited a long time for someone to take him home.A few hours behind them, following the same route, six more Sherpas left Camp 2 and headed to Camp 4. Their mission was to recover Paresh Nath.
“At 1:39 local time on a Wednesday afternoon, the recovery team searching for Goutam Ghosh got to his body, a pale-yellow crescent on a steep black-and-white backdrop, icebound between jagged rocks the color of coal. The head was downhill, the face turned slightly to the outside. The arms were splayed overhead, the back was arched and the feet were curled to the right. His once-bright clothes were bleached by the elements. So was the rope that was still attached to the rigging around his waist. It was red when all the Everest summiters of the year before climbed it, but was now faded to a dusky pink.
“A skull cap that Ghosh wore the day of the summit attempt was still on, but the yellow down-filled hood attached to his snowsuit was loose and filled with snow. It was still knotted where Ghosh had cinched it at the chin. His hands were bare, black and leathery, like his face. His white teeth, like the silver crampons still attached to his boots, gleamed in the sunshine.
Retrieving Dead Bodies from Everest
On the retrieval of Ravi Thakur, a 27-year-old, a trained mountaineer from Indian army, in 2019, Omkar Khandekar wrote in the South China Morning Post: There is no standard protocol when people die on the mountain. Rescue and retrieval operations are as risky as they are expensive. Many climbers thus prefer to be “committed” to Everest. Since Thakur had expressed no such desire to his family, they wanted his body back. [Source: Omkar Khandekar, South China Morning Post, June 16, 2019]
“When there’s an accident on Everest, we can send a team of Sherpas [members of the eponymous Nepali ethnic community who work as mountain guides] trained in such rescue operations,” said Thaneswar Guragai, manager of Seven Summit Treks, who coordinated the retrieval of Thakur’s body. “They need to not only be acclimatised to the altitude but also strong enough to carry an additional person. Even while doing so, they’re risking their lives.” On May 20, a team of six Sherpas trekked from base camp, at 5,335 meters, to Camp IV despite the hostile weather that had forced the government to issue a temporary advisory against summiting. Within 48 hours, they had returned with Thakur’s body. A helicopter then carried it to his family, who had been waiting at the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu. The entire operation cost nearly US$44,000.
Climbers’ families are increasingly insistent upon getting their kin back. A few trekking groups have thus started offering services to take corpses down from the mountain. In 2019, the bodies of nine of the 11 who died were successfully retrieved. The Nepalese government also undertook a six-week “clean-up” campaign in April and last month, collecting 10 tonnes of garbage and four bodies.
Difficulty and High Cost of Retrieving Dead Bodies from Everest
It is expensive retrieving dead bodies from Everest, generally costing between US$20,000 and US$70,000. And it is difficult too. Khandekar wrote in the South China Morning Post: Between four and eight people are needed to conduct a rescue or retrieval operation. The body is mounted on a sledge or a stretcher, tied with ropes that are held by Sherpas on all four sides; the Sherpas then haul it together to avoid slippage. Although the Nepalese government fixes support ropes all the way to the summit at the beginning of every climbing season, every ascent is fraught with risks.In 1984, an attempt to recover the corpse of a German mountaineer ended with both Sherpas being killed. [Source: Omkar Khandekar, South China Morning Post, June 16, 2019]
“It’s expensive and it’s risky, and it’s incredibly dangerous for the Sherpas,” to whom the task generally falls, Fort Collins, Colo., mountaineer Alan Arnette told CBC. And it’s not a one-man job. As Arnette explained, it requires multiple — generally six to 10 — Sherpas most of a day to bring a body down the mountain. Adding to the difficulty is the time crunch Sherpas” experienced by their presence in the “death zone”, where dawdling can result in death. [Source: Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post, May 27, 2016]
Travis M. Andrews wrote in the Washington Post:“The act itself isn’t easy, either. “Even picking up a candy wrapper high up on the mountain is a lot of effort, because it’s totally frozen and you have to dig around it,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, told BBC. “A dead body that normally weighs 80 kilograms might weigh 150 kilograms when frozen and dug out with the surrounding ice attached.” To actually remove a body, Arnette said, “They typically put it in some type of a rigging, sometimes a sled but often it’s just a piece of fabric. They tie ropes onto that, and then they do a controlled slip of the body in the sled, for lack of a better term, down to the next camp.”
“There’s not enough wood or stove fuel to cremate the bodies on the mountain, so they need to be brought low enough for helicopters to pick them up, which presents another hurdle. Between the base camp and the summit are four camps. Due to the thinness of the air further up the mountain, Arnette said helicopters don’t normally land above Camp 2, which is 21,000 feet high. Quartz noted that a helicopter did land on the peak in 2005, but that was a rarity, a dangerous one to boot. As Dan Richards, chief executive of Global Rescue, a firm involved in 2015 Everest rescue operations, told the website, “The last thing you want to do is to land a chopper in a place where there’s a possibility there can be an avalanche or a landslide.”
“With all those concerns in mind, many bodies simply remain on the mountain. That isn’t always easy for grieving families. Take, for example, the body of Tsewang Paljor, a young Indian climber who died in a 1996 blizzard, Outside reported. To reach the summit on the north side of the mountain, climbers sometimes have to step over frozen legs believed to be his, which are capped by the green footwear that has earned the body the nickname “Green Boots.”Paljor’s brother Thinley Paljor told BBC, “I was on the Internet, and I found that they’re calling him Green Boots or something. I was really upset and shocked, and I really didn’t want my family to know about this. Honestly speaking, it’s really difficult for me to even look at the pictures on the Internet. I feel so helpless.”
“Given the high death count in recent years, some don’t think the argument about removing the bodies is the correct one to have. Some don’t think anyone should climb the mountain at all. One former climber, Seaborn Beck Weathers who chronicled his experience nearly perishing on the mountain in a book titled “Left for Dead,” now strongly advises potential climbers to reconsider. He told BBC, “If you don’t have anyone who cares about you or is dependent on you, if you have no friends or colleagues, and if you’re willing to put a single round in the chamber of a revolver and put it in your mouth and pull the trigger, then yeah, it’s a pretty good idea to climb Everest.”
Bringing a Dead Body Down from the Death Zone and Camp 4
Branch wrote: “The men were able to pry Ghosh’s hood loose and pull it over his face. They tied the hood with rope so they would not have to see the face. “At first when we saw him, we were a little bit afraid,” Dawa Finjhok Sherpa said. “If we don’t see the skin, it’s easier.” The Sherpas connected Ghosh to a new rope, anchored in a rock about 30 feet uphill, and used ice axes to dig and pry the body from the snow. When the body moved, it moved as one piece, without torque, all the limbs, muscles and joints frozen solid. Pulling on a wrist turned the body all the way to the toes. Once the body was freed from the mountain’s grip, the men hammered blocks of ice from it. Dawa Finjhok Sherpa estimated the load weighed more than 300 pounds, double Ghosh’s weight when he was alive. Two men could not lift the body. Three struggled to maneuver it.. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“They tied ropes through Ghosh’s carabiner. They lowered him by rigging a pulley-type system through the same anchors used for climbers attempting the summit. They used Ghosh’s jumar, a ratcheting device used in climbing, to help belay the load, sliding it downhill one stretch of rope at a time. They had the mountain to themselves above Camp 4, which they could see far below in the saddle between Everest and Lhotse. “It was easier because there was a lot of snow this year, so the rocks were covered in snow and we could slide him,” Dawa Finjhok Sherpa said. “But the snowy, flat areas were hard. He was heavy.”
“Not far from where they found Ghosh’s body that morning was another body that Dawa Finjhok Sherpa estimated had been there for five or six years. And somewhere nearby, they knew, was the body of a doctor from Alabama who had died a few days before. There was no plan to bring it down.
“It took an hour to drag Ghosh’s body to Camp 4...The recovery team had a rolled-up plastic toboggan that it intended to use as a stretcher, but Ghosh’s body was too stiff and contorted to fit on it properly. So the men found an abandoned blue plastic tarp, wrapped it around Ghosh’s lower body and lashed it tight with mismatched pieces of rope. They found a thin, gray foam sleeping pad and did the same thing for his upper body.The men tried to keep the body on its back, but it slid better facedown. Soon the snowsuit was ripped open at the elbows, spilling down feathers. By nightfall, the team was pulling, lifting and sliding Ghosh down the mountain
“They rested in the middle of the night at Camp 3, which is carved into the precipitous ice of the Lhotse Face. A Seven Summits cook had hiked up from Camp 2 to meet them, and fed them noodles and juice. The Sherpas trudged downhill from there. “I started to make a system to belay the body below Camp 3,” Dawa Finjhok Sherpa said. “My partner was holding the rope, but he fell asleep. He let the rope slip just as I was hooking up our system. Three of us held on as tight as we could and we screamed. We all got rope burns. If we wouldn’t have held on, the body would have slipped down the mountain.” At dawn, Ghosh’s body arrived at the crampon point. The Sherpas assigned to get his body had been working nearly 28 hours.” Not long after that it was loaded on a helicopter near Camp 2 at more than 21,000 feet, the highest spot on the mountain that most helicopters can reasonably reach, and was flown to Kathmandu.
Cause of Death: “Undetrmined”
In Kathmandu. Ghosh’s body thawed for a couple of days in a hallway outside the autopsy room at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. Branch wrote in the New York Times: At 11 in the morning on May 31, a team of forensic doctors huddled over the body of Goutam Ghosh.The bodies had been placed on their own examination tables the day before. A pipe ran warm water over them to help them thaw. For the first time, Debasish Ghosh was taken to look at his brother’s face. He was struck not by overwhelming emotion, but by how black his brother’s face was. He was in the room for less than a minute. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“Bodies found at such high elevations, where the temperatures remain below freezing, are well preserved. The outside of the body appears intact, if shrunken and mummified. There is little decomposition internally. Threats found in other remote locations, such as heat, soggy conditions or animal scavengers, are not an issue at such high elevations. The university’s forensics department, led by Dr. Pramod Kumar Shrestha,” performed the post-mortems. “After one year, it may be difficult to determine the cause of death,” Shrestha said. “But we eliminate the possibilities one by one, until we are left with plausible explanations.”
“Many climbers who succumb to the elements are said to have died of high-altitude illness, a vague diagnosis. It was presumed to be what happened to Ghosh and Nath. “The head-regulating mechanics stop functioning when you’re in extreme cold temperatures,” Shrestha said. “With a lack of oxygen, the brain stops functioning. It is not able to coordinate various functions of the body. It’s the brain that coordinates the regulation of your body.”
“Sometimes there are several possible explanations. “They may have some injuries from falling or something,” Shrestha said. “They may have broken bones, internal injuries, a skull fracture, bruises. It depends on the conditions of their death. A lack of oxygen, an exposure to cold, starves the brain. The lungs get a froth in the respiratory passages. But it could be accompanied by a disease. Maybe they died there, but they had heart disease. We check all the internal organs for signs of pre-existing conditions.”
“With Ghosh, the doctors began with external observations, something often done by a police investigator looking for clues to a violent death. “The face appears partially mummified. Both the feet are soddened,” the doctors wrote in the final report for Ghosh. The eyes were “shrunken and collapsed,” they reported. They found lacerations on his right hand, perhaps stemming from rough handling during the recovery. There were no broken bones.
“A saw was used to cut into the head to retrieve the brain and to split the rib cage to inspect internal organs. The saw cut from behind one ear to the other, over the top of the head. The skin was pulled back, front to back, the skull opened and the brain removed. It was weighed and examined. No abnormalities were found. The brain was replaced, the skull fitted together and the skin sewn. “We try to keep the body as presentable as possible,” Shrestha said.
“There was an abnormal amount of fluid in the lungs. The chambers of the heart contained only “post-mortem clot.” The kidneys “appear congested,” the report said. But the heart and Ghosh’s other organs, most of them removed and weighed, were determined to be normal for a 50-year-old man. The abdomen and the chest were sewn back together, leaving a crude, thick laceration. The exam lasted about 45 minutes. In the final report, the doctors listed the cause of death as “undetermined.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Nepal Tourism Board (ntb.gov.np), Nepal Government National Portal (nepal.gov.np), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated February 2022