Everest toll 10 after 4 more climber deaths
Print Edition
RESCUERS found the bodies of four climbers on Mount Everest, an expedition organizer said yesterday, taking the season’s death toll to 10 as experts warn cut-price mountaineering outfits are putting clients at risk.
The climbers were found inside a tent at camp four — at 7,950 meters — on Tuesday by a rescue team which was there to retrieve the body of a Slovak climber who died on the mountain on Sunday.
“Our rescuers found bodies of four climbers in a tent at camp four yesterday. We don’t have the details of who they are or how they died yet,” said Mingma Sherpa, head of Seven Summit Treks, a Kathmandu-based agency that runs expeditions and rescue operations.
Local media reported that two of the dead were foreigners and two were Nepalese guides.
Strong winds hit Everest on Tuesday, forcing many to abandon their summit attempts and remain in tents at camp four.
Mountaineering commentator Alan Arnette said it appeared the four climbers died of carbon monoxide poisoning after using camping stoves inside their tent — preventable deaths that suggested both climbers and guides lacked experience.
“This is not just sad, it is totally irresponsible — to die from carbon monoxide poisoning is to break a basic rule of camping,” he wrote on his blog.
“The foreigners paid the ‘guides’ to take care of them. While I promote self sufficiency, and will suggest the ‘climbers’ should have also known better, these so-called Sherpa ‘guides’ clearly did not do their job.”
In recent years an increasing number of Kathmandu-based mountaineering companies have started offering Everest climbs at a fraction of the cost of their foreign rivals, who have traditionally dominated the market for expeditions to the world’s highest peak.
This year a record 373 permits were issued to foreign climbers to summit Everest from the Nepal side, with another 136 granted permission to ascend from the north face in Tibet.
Four people perished on the 8,848-meter peak over the weekend, including American doctor Roland Yearwood and Slovak climber Vladimir Strba.
Both died above the 8,000-meter mark — an area known as the mountain’s “death zone” where oxygen levels fall to dangerously low levels, heightening the risk of altitude sickness.
The body of Indian climber Ravi Kumar, 27, was spotted on Monday two days after he summited and then lost contact.
An Australian climber died on the Tibet side of the mountain on Sunday. This season has also claimed the lives of legendary Swiss climber Ueli Steck and 85-year-old Min Bahadur Sherchan, who died attempting to reclaim his title as the world’s oldest person to climb Everest.
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