Death on Everest leads to risky effort to recover bodies

The mountain is speckled with corpses. Nearly 300 people have died on Mount Everest in the century or so since climbers have been trying to reach its summit. At least 100 of them are still on the mountain, perhaps 200. Most of the bodies are hidden in deep crevasses or covered by snow and ice, but some are visible to every climber who passes by, landmarks in heavy plastic climbing boots and colorful parkas that fade a little more every year.

The most famous corpses get nicknames "Green Boots," ''Sleeping Beauty," ''The German" becoming warnings of what can go wrong on the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) peak, even as they become part of the mountain's gallows humor.

No mountaineer wants to end up a nicknamed body. No grieving family wants their loved one to become a punchline.

But in one of the most unforgiving places on Earth, where low oxygen, frigid temperatures and strong winds mean any effort can seem impossible, taking down the dead is no simple thing.

So when four people died on the upper reaches of Everest in recent days, and with a fifth missing and presumed dead, climbing teams and climbers' families scattered around the world had to face the question of whether the bodies would be brought down.

"For the loved ones back home and family members of those fallen and died on Mount Everest, it is worth it," said Ben Jones, a guide from Jackson, Wyoming, who made his third successful Everest ascent this year.

But the equation isn't simple.

"It's extremely difficult and extremely dangerous," said Arnold Coster, expedition leader for Seven Summit Treks, which lost two climbers this year on Everest and spent days getting them off the mountain. "The terrain is steep and the weather is bad. It's been snowing, and been very windy the past couple days," he said Thursday, as a team of Sherpas struggled to get the body of one climber, Maria Strydom, low enough to be picked up by helicopter.

It can take 10 Sherpas more than three days to move a body from Everest's South Col, at 8,000 meters or 26,300 feet, to Camp 2, a rocky expanse at 21,000 feet where helicopters can take over. It's a painful, exhausting process, with the bodies, which are normally carried in sleeping bags or wrapped in tents, often much heavier because they are covered in ice.

Given the risks involved in spending so much time at high altitudes, many climbing teams decide not to bring down their dead, sometimes lowering them into crevasses or covering them with rocks so they are not gawked at.

Coster said that Strydom's body was just off a main climbing route, in an area where it was easily visible, and that her family wanted it brought down.