It’s all summits since 1905 tracked in the Himalayan Database. I can’t attest to the completeness of it, but it’s generally regarded as the best source.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the chart above (click on the graph for more charts and tables).
OK, the contrast on my monitors didn’t let me see to Sep/Oct lines. I’m sure the data is accurate.
Probably a chart of plummets would look about the same.
Wild ass guess, but I bet there are proportionally fewer deaths in Sept/October. People climbing then know what they’re doing. May is all the tourists.
Really? What makes you say that?
Everest itself might be an exception. The “member deaths by season” table (pp. 156 in the PDF you linked) suggests an overall death rate for the spring season of 1.54 non-personnel climbers, vs 1.19 for the fall season.
That holds true for all 6000s (0.61 vs 0.49), 7000s (2.03 vs 1.43), and 8000s (1.58 vs 1.53). But for Everest specifically, the aggregated spring season death rate is 1.33 (142 deaths against 10,680 climbers above base camp), and the aggregated fall death rate is 1.72 (35 deaths against 2,030 climbers above base camp).
The difference is reversed, and much sharper, for hired personnel—0.65 in spring (69 deaths, 10,597 personnel above base camp) vs 2.47 in autumn (35 deaths, 1,419 personnel above base camp) although it looks like the variance is strongest for Annapurna and Kangchenjunga, not Everest.
| Cohort | Spring | Ascents | Deaths | Fall | Ascents | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member (all peaks) | 24,854 | 9,118 (36.7%) | 383 (1.54%) | 27,641 | 9,605 (34.7%) | 328 (1.19%) |
| Member (8000) | 19,433 | 7,633 (39.3%) | 306 (1.58%) | 11,741 | 3,505 (29.9%) | 179 (1.53%) |
| Member (Everest) | 10,680 | 4,931 (46.2%) | 142 (1.33%) | 2,030 | 190 (9.4%) | 35 (1.72%) |
| Hired (all peaks) | 16,596 | 149 (0.90%) | 10,858 | 126 (1.16%) | ||
| Hired (8000) | 14,545 | 129 (0.89%) | 5,614 | 69 (1.23%) | ||
| Hired (Everest) | 10,597 | 69 (0.65%) | 1,419 | 35 (2.47%) |
(from tables A-8, D-12, and D-13. I don’t think hired personnel ascent rates are tracked in that publication)
Outside magazine names the two Nepali men who died earlier on Everest. Ngima Dorji Sherpa and Pen Chhiri Sherpa died earlier this month, but their deaths were not reported until this week.
Two abandoned their climb of Everest but decided to go from Camp 3 to Lhotse instead. Unfortunately they did not make it back safely.
Thank you for finding this data.
Yes, thank you, very interesting and not what I expected. Now I’ll have to look at it by year. If the fall climbing season has more deaths due to weather, I’d expect deaths to decrease in the last 20 years as weather forecasting became more accurate
Everest has been summited in record time: round trip from London to the summit and back in less than a week. Instead of the usual weeks of acclimatizing, these guys inhaled xenon gas prior to their trip.
This is pretty wild.
Looks like they want to break the record for the most deaths in a day on Everest. 
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** For the record, 19 people died on one day on April 25, 2015.
Remember that no one is summiting Everest in October. The climbing window is in the spring.
IIRC, the climbing season is only possible because of a predictable seasonal shift in the jet stream pattern…the rest of the year the winds at the peak are over 100 mph.
There are tourism packages that include various treks on the lower slopes of Everest, sometimes they go as far up as base camp. These trips require a reasonably high level of fitness but no special skills. It’s not how I’d want to spend my vacation, but it’s not particularly dangerous and I can see the appeal for more adventurous travelers, you pass through little Nepalese villages where you can buy stuff and hang out in tea shops.
That headline is a little dramatic, it conjures up images of a large scale version of the air operations like the ones used after avalanches on the higher slopes.
In reality, it sounds like a road washed out leaving lots of trekkers stranded on the lower slopes at and below base camp. I don’t even think it’s a particularly life threatening situation.
While most summit successes occur in May, there are two climbing seasons per year, spring and fall. Some have successfully summited in the fall.
Added — Someone took Elizabeth Hawley’s database and created a bar graph. See the first image here, and note the successful summit climbs in October, and a very few in September.
