The Gruesome Truth About The Climbers Who Die on Mount Everest

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The world's highest mountain is also the world's highest open grave

The body climber David Sharp which has been left where he died.

The Story Behind Everest

Last week saw the release of Everest, the Hollywood blockbuster telling the tale of the 1996 disaster in which eight climbers tragically lost their lives – the most deadly day on the mountain up until that point.

Scott Fischer, a highly experienced mountain guide played by Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie, was one of those who lost his life that day. In the movie his friend and fellow guide Anatoli Boukreev tries to rescue Scott and eventually reaches him, only to realise he’s too late. Boukreev’s reaction, covering Scott’s face with his backpack before turning away, might seem odd to some – this was his colleague and climbing partner, surely he could do more?

"Human beings simply aren’t built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747."

But the shocking reality is there’s really very little you can do. The air is so thin that even with supplemental oxygen every minute that you spend above 26,000 feet – in what’s known as the Death Zone – you’re basically dying. The human brain becomes confused and even small movements require Herculean efforts.

As the movie trailer puts it: "Human beings simply aren’t built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747." Recovering a body requires a lot of effort, not to mention risk, and so most of the time they’re just left there.

In fact, Scott Fischer’s is one of around 200 bodies that still remain on Mt Everest, many of them with grimly fascinating stories to tell. The extreme cold preserves them where they fell and keeps them remarkably intact, turning them into grisly landmarks – shocking reminders of the extreme risks climbers face in summiting the world’s highest mountain.

Green Boots

The body of ‘green boots’, thought to be that of Tsewang Poljar, is passed by every climber who attempts the North East route to the summit.

Probably the most famous of the bodies on Mt Everest, "green boots" is thought to be the body of Tsewang Paljor (pictured below), a member of the Indian team who perished along with two of his colleagues in the 1996 Everest disaster.

Three of the members of the six-man summit team from the Indo-Tibetan border police expedition decided to turn back as the weather closed in on May 10th, but Tsewang Samanla, Dorje Morup and Paljor pressed on.

"None of the three was seen alive again."

A Japanese team coming back from the summit passed unidentified climbers who may have been Samanla, Morup and Paljor on the way up and the climbers’ Indian colleagues saw what they believed to be the men’s headlights trying to descend later that evening. But none of the three were seen alive again.

Dr. Volkmar Guido Hable was trained as a physicist and geoscientist and holds a Ph.D. in Geosciences and a B.S. in Agriculture and Agronomics. After graduation, however, he took a slightly different career path and entered the financial world.