• You must be logged in to see or use the Shoutbox. Besides, if you haven't registered, you really should. It's quick and it will make your life a little better. Trust me. So just register and make yourself at home with like-minded individuals who share either your morbid curiousity or sense of gallows humor.

Satanica

Veteran Member
Bold Member!
[....]
The three died of exhaustion while descending on Thursday.

It comes amid traffic jams near the summit as record numbers make the ascent, despite calls to limit the number of climbing permits.

Nepal has issued 381 permits at $11,000 (£8,600) each for the spring climbing season at the world's highest peak.

Two Indian climbers - Kalpana Das, 52, and Nihal Bagwan, 27 - died while scaling back down the mountain on Thursday.

Local tour organiser Keshav Paudel told AFP news agency that Bagwan had been "stuck in the traffic for more than 12 hours and was exhausted".

A 65-year-old Austrian climber died on the northern Tibet side of the mountain.

An Indian and an American lost their lives on the mountain on Wednesday, while an Irish professor, Séamus Lawless, is presumed dead after falling on 16 May.

Conditions this year have also been worse than usual, with high winds leaving a large number of climbers a narrow time frame to reach the summit.

Five people are known to have died on Everest and one in Lhotse in the spring season last year.

The number of people climbing Everest in 2019 could exceed last year's record of 807 people reaching the summit.
[....]
Ben Fogle, the adventurer and television presenter who climbed the mountain last year, called for "London Marathon style lottery for climbing permits" in a Twitter post.

Mountaineer Nirmal Purja's photo of queues at Mount Everest has attracted attention around the world this week.

The photo shows the last ridge Mount Everest's summit, from the southern, Nepali side. Climbers can also reach the summit via the northern, Tibetan side, but the southern route is much busier.
full

  1. If you look carefully, you'll see there are two rows of climbers. Because there is only one fixed rope at the summit, climbers ascending and descending the summit all have to share the same rope.
  2. The vast majority of Everest climbers use oxygen masks and cylinders at the summit - oxygen levels there are only about 30% what they are at sea level.

 
KATHMANDU: A total of 11,000 kg garbage and four dead bodies were removed from the mountain during a two-month long cleanliness drive conducted by the Nepal government.

The garbage, which included empty oxygen cylinders, plastic bottles, cans, batteries, food wrappings, faecal matter and kitchen waste, was flown to Kathmandu in army helicopters from the Everest base camp.

"Some of the garbage was handed over to the NGO 'Blue Waste to Value', which recycles waste products, during a function in Kathmandu in the presence of Nepal Army chief General Purnachandra Thapa on Wednesday, coinciding with World Environment Day.
[....]
The ceremony officially concluded the cleaning campaign, which began on April 14, to bring back tonnes of trash from the world's highest peak that has lately turned into a "garbage dump".

Of the total 11,000 kg rubbish, 1,000 kg was brought down from the Everest on the first day of the cleaning campaign. "On Tuesday, we brought down 5,000 kg of the last consignment of garbage from the Everest," Pandey said.

Some of the biodegradable garbage were dumped at Namche Bazaar, a famous market near the gateway to the Everest, he said.

"We will continue this cleanliness drive next year also under our Safa Himal Campaign," Pandey added.

He also said that the dead bodies included that of a Russian mountaineer and a Nepali climber. The two other bodies are yet to be identified, he said.

Besides the Nepal Army, the other agencies involved in the cleaning expedition included the Nepal Mountaineering Association, the tourism ministry and the Everest Pollution Control Organisation.
[....]
There have been attempts in the past to clean up Everest, including a 2014 government-mandated provision making it compulsory for every climber to come down the peak with at least 8 kg of garbage -- the amount of trash estimated to be produced by one climber.

 
Back
Top