Dead climbers on Mount Everest

[Dom Tuk]

The route to the summit of Mount Everest is littered with the bodies of dead climbers. Some i believe have been left there for years if not decades. It must be traumatic for the families involved. Is there no concereted effort to get the bodies off the mountain. Is it really impossible. Why are the governments not interested in retrieving the bodies of their nationals. Surely something has to be done to resolve this. Any idea of the numbers involved?

[Philtaz]

Estimates suggest that there are upwards of 100+ bodies on Everest. One site suggest that there are 165.  From books I've read(the best being Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer) most imply that the physical effort required to move a body at that height just cannot be summoned.  As most climbers at that altitude are at the very limit of human endurance, with extremes taking their toll on the body the inherrent risks of attempting to move and carry a body make it almost a physical impossibility.

Many are quite literally stuck to the mountain and having become a solid mass would have to be literally chipped off the face of it.  Sorry if that's a bit graphic.

[Ingrid C-L]

cf the guy (I think Australian) who recently tried to retrieve the body of a fellow-caver (who died some years back) and who died in the effort (possibly the cave was in Canada). As you can see I'm a stickler for the facts...!

[Loosehead]

It would be very difficult and dangerous and likely to result in even more bodies left up there.

[Quizmonster]

Most mountaineers would choose to have their bodies remain on Everest. Their attitude to the mountain is rather like the that of sailors to the sea...if they die there, then there they wish to remain. Thus, there are many sunken vessels which are treated officially as 'graves', lots of them 'war graves', and no-one suggests the bodies be removed for burial elsewhere. In the same way, mountaineers' families  know what their dear departed would have wanted and leave it that way. It is not something which needs to be "resolved".

[Guinevere]

I believe there have been efforts to clean up.  I also believe there are now stringent rules in place about who can visit Everest, and that everything that goes in has to come out again (ie oxygen tanks, and maybe bodies!)

[bernardo]

Many of those who perished would have fallen off ledges or into crevasses, and their bodies may be in places where they can't easily be found or recovered.

[Clanad]

Interestingly, on  May 8, 1978, two Tyrolean mountaineers, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, achieved the impossible. Messner had resolved that nothing would come between him and the mountain; he would climb Everest without supplemental oxygen or not at all. At the summit he described himself as �nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung.� Incredulous, some disputed the veracity of an oxygenless climb. Yet two years later Messner quelled all skepticism when on August 20, 1980, he again ascended Everest without oxygen, this time solo. Climbing without oxygen has now become de rigueur among the climbing elite, and by 1996 more than 60 men and women had reached the top relying on their own gasping lungs. (With thanks to infoplease)...

[newtron]

For any mountain rescue, the most important factor is the safety of the rescuers and a risk assessment must be done before the rescue based on the probability of a successful rescue versus the probability of the rescuers getting injured or killed.  In this case however, it is not a rescue.  It is a body recovery and therefore any risk assessment greatly favors leaving the bodys there.  I have participated in a couple of minor mountain rescues (as a rescuer) and believe me, carrying a immoble person down a mountain is not trivial and can be very dangerous.