A US climber has died on Mount Everest, his expedition organizer said on Tuesday, the fourth death on the highest mountain in the world this season after three Nepali climbers were killed last month.
The 69-year-old mountaineer was on an acclimatization rotation at around 6,400 meters when he died on Monday.
A guide said the man, who has not been named, had been taken unwell and died at Camp 2, around 2,400-meters below the 8,849-meter summit.
‘He was feeling unwell and passed away at Camp 2. Efforts are underway to bring (back) his body,’ Pasang Tshering Sherpa of Beyul Adventure said.
The Sherpa said bad weather was hampering efforts to recover the climber’s body.
Acclimatization rotations are designed to gradually expose the body to higher and higher altitudes in order to help it to adjust, before returning back down to a lower, more comfortable altitude.
The man had been on an expedition with Beyul Adventure, a local partner of US-based expedition organizer International Mountain Guides.
‘It is with deep sorrow that IMG reports the death of one of our Everest 2023 team members at Camp 2,’ IMG chief Eric Simonson said in a statement on the company’s website.
‘Because it’s there’: Mount Everest’s enduring appeal
Everest, known as Sagarmatha in Nepali and Chomolungma in Tibetan, has captured the imagination of climbers ever since it was identified as the tallest mountain above sea level.
The first expedition was launched in 1921 by the British, but it would take another 32 years and several more expeditions before Nepali Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary would finally reach its summit.
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