A TEAM of Nepali mountaineers will leave Kathmandu today heading for Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, where they hope to climb to more than 8,000m (26,000ft) to clear the mountain’s “death zone” of tonnes of rubbish and remove bodies of dead climbers.
Though many foreign and Nepali expeditions have set out to clear parts of the mountain in the past, Namgyal Sherpa, leader of the Extreme Everest Expedition 2010, said no one had tried to clear at that height. “This is the first time we are cleaning the death zone. It is very difficult and dangerous,” said Sherpa, who has climbed Everest seven times.
The zone earned its name because it is almost impossible to survive the harsh temperatures and the thin air of such altitudes, where there is a third as much oxygen as at sea level, for more than a couple of days. Anyone who remains within the zone for longer will almost certainly perish.
The climbers will use special bags to collect the bodies - which lie between the South Col and the 8,850m summit - before lowering them down the snow and icefields of the mountain and then carrying them across the glaciers to base camp. The expedition hopes to retrieve five bodies, including that of a climber killed two years ago.
Scores of corpses preserved by the freezing temperatures remain on the mountain, some for decades. “I have seen three corpses lying there for years,” Namgyal said. “We’ll bring down the body of a Swiss climber who died in the mountain in 2008 and cremate it below the base camp, for which we have got the family’s consent.” In 1999 a research expedition found the remains of George Mallory, a British explorer and mountaineer, who disappeared with ropemate Andrew Irvine in 1924. Experts have long debated whether it was possible that the pair had actually reached the summit before perishing. The find did not provide conclusive evidence.
Climbing has become a key source of income for Nepal, a state reduced to poverty by civil strife and misgovernment. Not only do expeditions provide jobs for thousands but climbers pay high fees to the Nepali authorities for permission to venture on to the mountain, providing much-needed hard currency. – (Guardian service)