Glaciers Melt Leaving Dozens Of Corpses Exposed On Everest

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

The bodies of climbers who died on Mount Everest a long time ago are now found as the iconic mountain glaciers melt, and local groups have led excursions to retrieve the bodies as they emerge from the icy trenches.

According to a BBC report, warming temperatures caused by climate change thaw ice on Everest, an increasing number of body parts, including the hands and legs, are found in climbs, especially on the glacier known as the Khumbu Icefall, where most of the bodies have been found in recent years.

"Due to global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are rapidly melting and the bodies that remained buried all these years are now being exposed," Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of the Nepal Mountaineers Association, told the BBC. "We have knocked down the bodies of some mountaineers who have died in recent years, but now the old men who were buried are coming out."

The expedition's operators routinely carry out campaigns to retrieve the bodies, which can cost up to $ 80,000 for each trip, the BBC reported. Sometimes, to their disappointment, they must leave a body where it was found.

"Most of the corpses that we take to the cities, but those that we cannot knock down, we respect by praying for them and covering them with rock or snow," Tenzeeng Sherpa, treasurer of the National Association of Mountain Guides of Nepal, told CNN..

Ang Tshering Sherpa recalled one particularly difficult excursion where her group carried a body weighing 330 pounds from a place near the peak of Everest. Although it was difficult, he felt the duty to remove the body from the mountain.

"But we operators feel it is our duty," he told CNN. "So every time we find them, we tear down the bodies."