Bodies of fallen climbers finally recovered from Everest ‘death zone’
Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa has never forgotten the body he encountered just meters from the summit of Mount Lhotse in the Himalayas over a decade ago.
In May 2012, the Nepali guide was assisting a German climber in their attempt to reach the world’s fourth highest peak. They came across a body blocking their path, believed to be Milan Sedlacek, a Czech mountaineer who had died a few days earlier.
Sherpa wondered why the Czech climber had perished so close to the summit. One of the gloves on the frozen body was missing.
“The exposed hand might have slipped from the rope,” Sherpa speculated. “He could have lost his balance and fallen onto the rock.”
The body remained in place, and subsequent climbers had to step past it on their way up Mount Lhotse.
Now, 12 years later, at 46, Sherpa found himself returning to the mountain to retrieve the climber’s body. He was part of a team comprising a dozen military personnel and 18 sherpas, sent by the Nepali army to clean up the high Himalayas.
There have been more than 300 deaths in the Everest region since records of mountain climbing there began a century ago, and many of these bodies remain. The death toll has kept increasing: eight people have been killed so far this year; and 18 died in 2023, according to Nepal’s tourism department.
The government first launched the clean-up campaign in 2019, which included removing some bodies of dead climbers. But this year was the first time that authorities set a goal to retrieve five bodies from the so-called “death zone”, above an altitude of 8,000m (26,247 feet).
In the end the team – who subsisted on water, chocolate and sattu, a mixture of chickpea, barley and wheat flour – retrieved four bodies.
One skeleton and 11 tonnes of rubbish were removed at lower attitudes after a 54-day operation that ended on 5 June.
“Nepal has received a bad name for the garbage and dead bodies which have polluted the Himalayas on a grave scale,” Major Aditya Karki, the leader of this year’s operation, told BBC Nepali.
The campaign also aims to improve safety for the climbers.
Maj Karki says many have been startled by the sight of bodies – last year, one mountaineer could not move for half an hour after seeing a dead body on the way to Mount Everest.
Many people cannot afford to retrieve the bodies of relatives who have died on mountains in Nepal. Even if they have the financial means, most private companies refuse to help get bodies from the death zone because it is too dangerous.
The military allocated five million rupees ($37,400; £29,000) this year to retrieve each body. Twelve people are needed to lower a body from 8,000m, with each needing four cylinders of oxygen. One cylinder costs more than $400, meaning that $20,000 is needed for oxygen alone.
Every year, there is only about a 15-day window during which climbers can ascend and descend from 8,000 metres, as the winds slow down during the transition between wind cycles. In the death zone, the wind speed often exceeds 100 km per hour.
After locating the bodies, the team mostly worked after nightfall because they did not want to disturb other mountaineers. In the Everest region, which also consists of Lhotse and Nuptse, there is only one single ladder and ropeway for people climbing up and down from base camp.
“It was very tough to bring back the bodies from the death zone,” Mr Sherpa says. “I vomited sour water many times. Others kept coughing and others got headaches because we spent hours and hours at very high altitude.”
At 8,000m, even strong Sherpas can carry only up to 25kg (55 pounds), less than 30% of their capacity at lower altitudes.
