Climber queues near the summit of Mount Everest are putting lives on the line.
Three more climbers died after summiting the world’s tallest peak on Thursday, just days after a photo of a throng of mountaineers lined up and waiting to summit the 29,029-foot mountain went viral. That makes five fatalities on the Himalayan mountain this week, including American Donald Lynn Cash, 55, from Utah, who collapsed from altitude sickness on his way down the mountain.
Indian climber Anjali Kulkarni, 55, also died on her journey back down on Thursday. Her son told CNN that she became stuck in the “traffic jam” above Camp 4 (the final camp before the summit at 26,247 feet). And a climber with Swiss outfitter Kobler and Partner was the third fatality that day, also dying while descending the mountain.
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first two people to climb Mount Everest in 1953, and the number of adventurers challenging the punishing climb. Since then, more than 4,000 people have reached the summit as more climbers answer the call to see the top of the world. It’s a pursuit that can cost $45,000 or more. Nepal’s tourism ministry issued a record 381 climbing permits this year, the New York Times reported. “This Is Us” star Mandy Moore is currently climbing to Everest Base Camp, which is 17,600 feet above sea level.
But the crowds are believed to have contributed to several of these recent deaths, as the congestion leaves climbers exposed longer to the dangerous wind, cold and lack of oxygen at the highest natural point in the world. (In fact, so many people have been climbing that piles of garbage and human waste are becoming an issue.) Nirmal Purja, who took the photo of a line of climbers winding along the ridge up to the Everest summit, made the climb as part of his Project Possible challenge to reach the tops of the 14 highest Himalayan peaks. He wrote on Facebook that he was among roughly 320 people attempting the “summit push” on Wednesday.
Danduraj Ghimire, director general of Nepal’s Tourism Department, told CNN that such claims are “baseless,” and pinned the recent losses on inclement weather.
“So when there is a small window when the weather clears up, climbers make the move,” Ghimire said. “On May 22, after several days of bad weather, there was a small window of clear weather, [and] more than 200 mountaineers ascended Everest. The main cause of deaths on Everest has been high-altitude sickness, which is what happened with most of the climbers who lost their lives this season as well.”
More than 200 people have died on Mount Everest’s peak since 1922. In part due to the difficulty and expense of retrieval, most bodies are left on the mountain and are believed to be buried beneath the snow.
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