Harrowing tales behind the bodies on Everest trails

Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa, a mountain guide, recalls in an interview with BBC that for years, he has been unable to erase from his memory the view from Lhotse in the Himalayas. The Nepali was working as a guide for a German mountaineer who attempted to climb the fourth highest mountain in the world in May 2012. The climbers there came across the body of Milan Sedlacek, a Czech mountaineer who had died just a few days earlier, and every climber ascending Lhotse had to pass by it.

Sherpa had no idea at the time that he would return to this place 12 years later to retrieve the body of the Czech mountaineer. He did so as a member of a team tasked by Nepalese authorities with cleaning up the mountains and recovering the bodies of deceased climbers. And there are plenty of them on these peaks.

Since mountain climbing began to be recorded there a hundred years ago, over 300 people have died in the Everest region, and many of those bodies remain on the trail. Furthermore, the number of fatalities continues to rise, with eight people already dying this year. According to data from the Nepali tourism department, 18 people died in 2023.

For the first time, the government launched a campaign to clean up Himalayan peaks in 2019—the climbers of the eight-thousanders left behind tons of trash. - Nepal has received a bad name for the garbage and dead bodies which have polluted the Himalayas on a grave scale – Major Aditya Karki, leader of this year's operation, told BBC.

Karki does not hide that many people were shocked by the sight of bodies. Last year, one climber couldn't move for half an hour after seeing a dead body on the way to Mount Everest.

Many relatives of climbers who died in the Himalayas are unable to recover their bodies. Even if they have the funds to cover the costs, there are few willing to conduct an operation in the so-called death zone. The problem is also that during the year, the weather window in which the operation poses the least risk lasts only 15 days.

It was very tough to bring back the bodies from the death zone –, said Sherpa, who participated in the operation.

The bodies of the four retrieved climbers were found in the same position in which they had died. Transporting them was difficult for many reasons. Altitude, weather conditions, and regulations are just a few. According to Nepalese law, all bodies must remain in the best possible condition before being returned to the authorities – any damage can result in penalties.

Documents were found with two of the bodies retrieved from the death zone. They were the aforementioned Czech Milan Sedlacek, and the other was American Ronald Yearwood, who died in the Himalayas in 2017. The identification of the other two bodies is ongoing.