Mount Everest Overcrowding Linked to as Many as 10 Deaths

Monday, May 27, 2019

GoLocalPDX News Team

Mount Everest overcrowding causes lethal conditions and officials have confirmed that four mountaineers died this week while climbing Mount Everest. In total, ten have died this climbing season.

Anjali Kulkarni, Kalpana Dash and Don Cash died while descending the mountain and Nihal Bagwan died at the balcony area before the summit. All of the climbers had been subjected to a queue of over 200 people attempting to reach the mountain’s peak.

The queue stretched from the final base camp, which sits at an elevation of 8,000 meters, to the final 8,848 meter summit. The area is known as the “death zone” because the lack of oxygen available makes it extremely dangerous to stay for a prolonged amount of time. Danduraj Ghimire, director general of Nepal’s tourism department, said the human traffic jam was due to bad weather conditions.

Ed Dohring, a doctor from Arizona, had dreamed his whole life of reaching the top of Mount Everest. But when he summited a few days ago, he was shocked by what he saw, he told the NewYork Times.

Climbers were pushing and shoving to take selfies. He even had to step around the frozen body of a woman who had just died, he reported.

“It was scary,” he said by telephone from Kathmandu, Nepal, where he was resting in a hotel room. “It was like a zoo.”