New Delhi: In the first fatality of the season, while climbing the world’s highest mountain Mount Everest, a climber from Nepal was found dead on early Thursday at a trail close to an area known as the “football field”.
According to reports, the climber identified as Ngimi Tenji Sherpa died on the peak which is said to be a relatively safe region of the treacherous Khumbu Icefall.
The 32-year-old climber was carrying equipment uphill to Camp 2 and was found in a sitting position, still wearing his backpack, news agency AFP reported quoting a US-based expedition company International Mountain Guides.
“His body has been brought down. There were no accidents, and initial medical check suggests high-altitude sickness,” an official of the expedition organisers said on Friday.
Sherpa had summited Mount Everest several times before his last climb this season, APF report stated.
Hundreds of climbers flock each year to Nepal – which homes some of the world’s highest mountains – to scale the Himalayan peaks during the spring season that begins around March and ends in June every year.
Several reports claim that more than 200 climbers and sherpas have lost their lives while climbing these mountains. Sadly, deaths occur on Everest almost every year.
Nepal’s department of tourism gave permission to as many as 204 climbers from 42 countries, including 15 from India to scale Mount Everest this season.
Sherpa’s death was followed by the demise of a Greek climber Antonios Sykaris on the 8,167-metre (26,795-foot) Dhaulagiri earlier this week.
Sykaris fell ill while descending from the summit of the world’s seventh-highest mountain and died at an altitude of 7,400 metres, the report stated.