Everest: Bodies of fallen climbers finally recovered from ‘death zone’

Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa cannot forget the dead body he saw just metres from the summit of Mount Lhotse in the Himalayas more than a decade ago.

The Nepalese man was working as a guide for a German climber attempting to scale the world’s fourth-highest mountain in May 2012. The body blocking his path is believed to be that of Milan Sedlacek, a Czech climber who had died just days earlier.

Mr. Sherpa was curious to know why the Czech climber had died so close to the summit. The frozen corpse was missing one of its gloves.

“It is possible that his bare hand came loose from the rope,” the guide said. “He may have died when he lost his balance and crashed into the rock.”

The body remained where it was, and all subsequent climbers on Mount Lhotse had to climb over it.

Mr Sherpa, 46, had no idea he would return 12 years later to recover the climber’s body, as part of a team of a dozen soldiers and 18 Sherpas deployed by the Nepalese army to clear the high Himalayas.

More than 300 deaths have been recorded in the Everest region since records of mountain climbs began a century ago, and many of those bodies are still there. The death toll has continued to rise: eight people have died so far this year and 18 in 2023, according to Nepal’s tourism department.

The government first launched the cleanup campaign in 2019, which included removing some bodies of dead climbers. But this year was the first time authorities set a goal of recovering five bodies from the so-called “death zone,” at an altitude of more than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet).

In the end, the team, which subsisted on water, chocolate and sattu, a mixture of chickpea, barley and wheat flour, recovered four bodies.

A skeleton and 11 tons of debris were removed to a lower altitude after a 54-day operation that ended on June 5.

“Nepal has been infamous for the garbage and dead bodies that have polluted the Himalayas on a massive scale,” Major Aditya Karki, leader of this year’s operation, told BBC Nepali.

The campaign also aims to improve the safety of climbers.

Maj Karki says many have been shocked by the sight of dead bodies: last year, a climber was unable to move for half an hour after seeing a dead body on the way to Mount Everest.

Many people cannot afford to recover the bodies of relatives who have died in the mountains of Nepal. Even if they have the financial means, most private companies refuse to help remove bodies from the death zone because it is too dangerous.

The army has allocated five million rupees ($37,400; £29,000) this year to retrieve each body. To bring a body down from 8,000 metres, it takes 12 people, and each of them needs four oxygen cylinders. One cylinder costs more than $400, meaning $20,000 is needed for the oxygen alone.

Each year, climbers only have a time window of about 15 days to ascend and descend from 8,000 meters, as the winds slow down during the transition between wind cycles. In the death zone, wind speeds often exceed 100 km per hour.

After locating the bodies, the team worked mostly after dark, as they did not want to disturb other climbers. In the Everest region, which also includes Lhotse and Nuptse, there is only one staircase and one cable car to get to and from base camp.

“It was very difficult to bring the bodies back from the death zone,” Sherpa says. “I vomited sour water many times. Others were coughing all the time and others had headaches because we spent hours and hours at high altitude.”

At 8,000 meters, even the strongest Sherpas can only carry up to 25 kg (55 lb), less than 30% of their capacity at lower altitudes.