Boiling Water, Axes Needed to Retrieve Everest's Dead

Climate change is thinning snow and ice on the slopes of Mount Everest, unveiling the bodies of hundreds of people who died in quest of summiting the world's highest peak. Now comes the process of dealing with them—which, like the Everest climb, is neither easy nor cheap. As part of a $600,000 clean-up campaign on Everest and its adjoining peaks Lhotse and Nuptse, five frozen bodies were retrieved this year by a team of 12 military personnel and 18 climbers who used axes and boiling water to break the mountains' icy grip on their victims, CBS News reports. Team members worked for 11 hours to free a single body encased in ice up to its torso, putting their own lives at risk.

Some may wish to retrieve the bodies of loved ones for religious reasons, for the application of death benefits, and for closure. But the Nepalese army major who led the team highlights another reason altogether: "Seeing a dead body on Everest is gruesome" and "can have long-lasting psychological effects," Aditya Karki tells Outside. For some, the risk of retrieval is not worth the reward. It's extremely difficult work recovering bodies at high altitudes, where "a person's ability to carry heavy loads is severely affected," per CBS. And the highest concentration of bodies on Everest is found between Camp 4, at 26,600 feet, and the summit, at 29,030 feet, per Outside.

"Getting the body out is one part, bringing it down is another challenge," team member Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa tells CBS. Bodies are often bagged, then dragged down the mountain on sleds. But one body close to Lhotse's peak was "frozen with hands and legs spread" and couldn't fit on a sled. "We had to carry it down to Camp Three as it was, and only then could it be moved to be put in a sled to be dragged," says Sherpa. Still, he sees the work as a way to "give back" to the mountains that "have given us mountaineers so many opportunities." "If we keep leaving [bodies] behind, our mountains will turn into a graveyard," Karki tells CBS. (More Mount Everest stories.)