Mallory and Irvine, Green Boots - how many climbers and Sherpas have died on Everest?
And, will they ever decay?
Iceman Ötzi died in the Alps 5300 years ago, was mummified and pretty well preserved under similar conditions.
Here’s a collection of photos of Everest bodies** (mildly graphic)**. Most are still covered in clothing but exposed areas of the body do seem to desiccate (i.e. dry up) and wither away. A little disturbing seeing a seemingly intact, clothed body with an exposed skull attached to it.
According to Wiki there are about 150 bodies on Everest.
About 250 climbers have died on Everest. The bodies of those who were killed in Basecamp and some of those in the icefalls and at South Col were removed. Pretty much all the rest are still on the mountain somewhere; either lost, left where they fell, or entombed in a nearby crevasse.
So there’s well over 100 bodies somewhere up there.
Another macabre question: when these bodies finally dessicate down to bones, do they get light enough to be blown off the mountain? I would think the Nepal government would prefer to remove the bodies-seeing them cannot be good for climber’s morale.
I think this pictures included Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, from 1996. But I would like to think they’ve been recovered by now.
Sometimes the bodies find a gruesome end: The bodies high on Everest freeze solid. Then in the spring thaw, some of them get exposed by the receding snow, and if they blow off or otherwise fall down a cliff, they can shatter like ice cubes.
That’s more or less what happened to her, after terrifying countless climbers by dying and freezing in a sitting position, eyes open, with hair blowing in the wind.
A similar thing happens in the high mountains around Seattle. My brothers friends told of walking up to a man sitting, alone, in the fog, and noticing that the snow/ice was not melting when it hit his face. Kind of scary when you know that if you count wrong, or miss a landmark, and go down the wrong gully/ridge in the bad light, that’s how you will end up.
In that case they later identified him as a missing climber. That family … got some closure … from knowing what had happened to him, and that he was sort of alright, out there.
I’m pretty sure there’s no place in the US where the authorities will just leave a body. Sure there’s a lot of wilderness for one to go missing, but once found they are definitely going to recover it.
So after some quick googling, it looks like there are some bodies on Mt. McKinley. But they’re either in places that were deemed too hazardous to recover or else which were reburied by the rangers at the family’s request instead of recovered.
But I’m pretty sure there’s nowhere in the lower 48 like that. Certainly not in the Seattle area. The military helicopters they sometimes use for S&R are perfectly capable of operating up to the summit of Mount Rainier so recovery operations aren’t the massive undertaking they are in the upper reaches of Denali let alone over 8,000m in the high Himalayas.
That’s probably the way I would want to go, IF I had to sit on a mountain-top freezing to death watching the sunset. Although my body breaking into a bunch of ice cubes?
Not so much. Just leave me until spring thaw.
Better than being eaten by a great white.
Death is never very pretty.
I took Melbourne’s remarks to mean that corpse in question had recently gone missing. It hadn’t been abandoned, like on Everest, it just hadn’t been found yet.
Maybe, but the “knowing he was sort of alright, out there” implies the body was just left there to enjoy the view forever.
FWIW, I’ll clarify that I don’t know what happened after. My understanding was that the dead man was far enough off the main route that he hadn’t been previously located, and that when he was located, the family was willing to let him rest there.
But that was early 1990’s, and I can’t claim that I have strong and accurate memories.
I’m 99% sure that the authorities would not be willing to just leave the body there, regardless of the family’s wishes. The only circumstances when this is done is when recovering the body would be too hazardous.
If the family didn’t want him, he’d be treated like a pauper, which usually means burial in an unmarked grave by the local county government.
The problem is that, by definition, the corpses lie in places where simply “breathing and walking on” are difficult and dangerous, let alone any kind of physical exertion like carrying a corpse. It’s not called “the death zone” because it’s all rainbows and ponies.
An expedition to bring them back down would run high risks of simply adding some more to the pile.
It’s nearly impossible to remove the bodies that are high up on Everest. It’s difficult enough just to get yourself up and down. Here’s an article about a team of Sherpa’s hoping to remove 5 bodies.
I believe it was in Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air where he told the story of a Korean climber that died on the mountain. His family mounted an expedition to bring him back. The team managed to move him 200 yards.
George “Because it’s there” Mallory died on Everest. His body was finally found 75 years later; it was well preserved, though the sun had bleached the hair white.
If a body can be found by just “walking up to it”, I’m pretty sure it can be removed.
Paging D. B. Cooper…