It was the spring of 2017. Dawa Finjook Sherpa had just returned from China after an unsuccessful attempt to climb Mount Chyou when an offer came his way: to retrieve the body of a Bengali climber who had died near the Everest summit.
Indian national Goutam Ghosh’s body had remained buried under the snow at an altitude of 8,400 meters (27,500 feet) for over a year following his death in 2016.
Dawa, the 30-year-old guide from Makalu, knew it was a difficult job. But it was only upon seeing the body that he came to realize that this would be one of the most perilous retrieval missions in the entire history of mountaineering, let alone his career.
“Being buried under snow for months had turned his body rock solid,” Sherpa recalls in an interview with Everest Chronicle. “There were five of us who were meant to carry it along a narrow ridge that most people can barely traverse without carrying anything. It was so difficult, it occurred to me multiple times that we might not survive had there been any delays.”
After arriving early in the morning of May 22 at the spot where Ghosh’s body lay, the five Sherpas spent 28 hours in the so-called death zone—8,000 meters above sea level—slowly hauling his body on a stretcher across one of the most treacherous trails in the world. There was no time for rest or meals while the climbers trudged along the snow, surrounded by thin air where it’s difficult to survive without supplementary oxygen. It took several days before the crew was able to bring the body to the base camp before eventually handing it over to Ghosh’s family in Kathmandu.
“We had only consumed a bottle of boiled coke before leaving Camp 4. We survived on that for the next 36 hours,” Dawa says, recounting the time spent in the death zone, an area above an altitude of 8,000 meters where people can easily die from the harsh cold weather, frostbites, and lack of oxygen. “We couldn’t rest at all because one can easily die if they remain in the death zone for too long.”
A Kolkata-based police officer, fifty-year-old Ghosh died in May 2016 after running out of oxygen during his ascent of Mount Everest. Eyewitnesses told The New York Times that he was last seen on his way to the summit. Dawa’s crew was unable to drag Ghosh’s six-feet-tall body along the terrain, afraid that it would break into pieces, as it was frozen stiff after remaining in the snow for over a year.
“It took a long time to carry the body across even a few hundred meters as we were determined to bring it back in one piece,” Dawa recalls.
Several hours of struggling to dig out the buried body, then carrying it on a stretcher along a deadly, narrow trail in the world’s highest landscape had left the climbers weary. Torn between the need to survive and the need to nourish and replenish themselves, the climbers took short rest stops but couldn’t do so for longer, fearing the loss of their own lives.
“There was no water to drink or time to rest. We were all afraid that we would become delirious and possibly die if we did not walk faster,” says Dawa. “More than once, I remembered my family and friends, thinking that it would be my last day.”
Ghosh’s body was one of three climbers’ remains that were retrieved from areas close to the Everest summit in 2017. All three climbers had died a year earlier and the Indian government had spent approximately 200,000 USD on retrieval and repatriation of their citizens, according to Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, the company that coordinated the retrieval expedition for Ghosh’s remains.
The mission has since stood as a testament to the possibility of retrieving all dead bodies from Mount Everest, something that was once considered impossible. In May 2021, Seven Summit Treks undertook yet another mission to retrieve the body of Abdul Waraich, a Pakistani-Swiss climber, from an even higher altitude. According to the retrieval crew, in spite of the higher altitude, this mission was relatively easier than the 2017 one as Waraich had died more recently and the snow hadn’t had a chance to impact his body as much.
Under ordinary circumstances, families let the bodies of their loved ones remain on the mountain, many out of respect for the deceased individuals’ love for the mountains. In some cases, families have struggled to locate the bodies or found that retrieval is impossible. For many, the exorbitant costs of retrieval and repatriation stand in the way. Most retrieval missions require a team of highly skilled Sherpas with appropriate gears, equipment—sometimes aided by helicopters—all of which make the costs skyrocket.
According to climbers, the world’s tallest peak, mainly on its southern edge, has gradually turned into a graveyard.
“The sighting of bodies and body parts, including skeletons, has become common. Even though we are getting used to it, sights like that can be frightening for anyone, especially at that height,” says veteran guide Kami Rita Sherpa who has climbed the Everest summit 25 times in the spring of 2021.
In recent years, the Nepal government has faced growing criticism for allowing Everest to turn into a graveyard by issuing climbing permits to inexperienced and unskilled climbers. Nepal has always favoured quantity over the quality of climbers and done little to prevent traffic jams on the mountain during peak climbing season. Questions have also been raised around the vetting criteria used by authorities to determine climbers’ eligibility.
The authorities have also been on the receiving end of criticism over the dismally slow pace at which waste, which tragically includes human remains that have been languishing in the snow for years, is being cleared from the climbing routes. The Nepal Army as well as several NGOs have launched numerous campaigns and cleaning expeditions, but without much success.
“Until now, the cleaning campaigns have been focused on the lower areas as the upper areas are hard to access and require highly qualified manpower as well as a lot of money. If the government is to truly clean the mountain landscape, a team of highly qualified Sherpas should be given the chance. That way, everything, including lost bodies, can be brought back,” says Kami Rita.
There is an estimated 20 tons of garbage that has piled up around the summit of Everest alone. Its peak has been climbed over 6,500 times from the south side since 1953 when New Zealander beekeeper Edmund Hillary and Nepali climber Tenzin Norgay Sherpa first successfully climbed Everest.
There’s a debate as to whether such missions are worthwhile pursuits, particularly when neither the families of the deceased nor concerned governments want to bear the colossal costs of retrieval. The cost of bridging a body from the altitude of 8,000 meters could spiral up to USD 100,000, depending on factors such as location of the body and the amount of time it has been buried in the snow, amongst others.
However, there are those who believe that it is indispensable to clean the mountains, no matter who bears the expense. “Bodies that can be brought back should be brought back,” says Dawa. “And those that cannot be brought back should at least be removed to a corner so that they are not visible to other climbers.”
