Why bringing the dead down from Everest and similar high altitudes remains a challenge

Satyarup is no stranger to the mountains. He is the youngest person in the world to climb both the Seven Summits (the highest peaks on each continent) and the Volcanic Seven Summits (the highest volcanoes on each continent), completing the dual milestone on January 15, 2019, at the age of 35 years (and 262 days), earning an official entry into the Guinness World Records. Witnessing a death on the mountain shook him although deaths at high altitude happen with grim regularity. Some bodies lie in situ, remarkably preserved, for years, if they are not disturbed by the strong winds or avalanches.

One of the most macabre markers in the death zone close to Everest’s summit is ‘Green Boots’, a mountaineer now identified as Dorje Morup, wearing lime-coloured Koflach boots. The body of the lance naik of Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has remained there for decades after he died in a blizzard in 1996. According to reports, Morup, a resident of Ladakh, was one of six on an ITBP expedition to scale Everest. After his body was identified earlier this year, Indian authorities last month released a plan to retrieve ‘Green Boots’, setting in motion an extraordinarily difficult recovery operation.

On July 30 this year, world-famous mountaineer Nimsdai Purja and other members of his expedition died in an avalanche on Broad Peak (8,051 metres) in Pakistan. Their bodies were subsequently recovered in a difficult high-altitude operation led by Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, a fellow Nepali mountaineer and longtime professional rival and friend.

As far as possible, government agencies handling mountaineering tourism try to at least move bodies out of the sight of climbers.

Priyanka Mohite, the first Indian woman to have summited five mountains above 8,000 metres, says the focus on summiting becomes paramount, but the mental toll of seeing dead bodies along the way can be profound. “When I was on the final push to summit Lhotse (8,516m), I saw someone sitting on the side, which I later realised to be a dead body,” Mohite recalls. “It struck me in the gut and I remembered mountaineers telling me about encountering this body which is about 10-20 minutes away from the summit. My initial thought was that I was close to the summit, but by the time I was on my way down, I felt deeply for the climber fallen there. The anticipation of summiting had worn off and the body served as a grim reminder of life and death on the mountains.”

It is estimated that at least 200 bodies remain on Everest alone. Other mountains, including Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu, Kangchenjunga and Makalu, have claimed hundreds of lives, too, but no one knows how many bodies still remain on these mountains.

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“I have seen dead bodies on Kangchenjunga and Dhaulagiri,” Mohite says. “Since I summited Everest from the South side, I didn’t see Green Boots, who is on the north side (Tibet) of Mount Everest on the Northeast Ridge, but I can imagine the difficulty of retrieving bodies from high altitude.”

One of the well-documented retrievals of bodies from Everest is that of three West Bengal climbers — Gautam Ghosh, Paresh Nath and Subhash Paul, who were killed in 2016. According to reports, after Ghosh’s family petitioned for his body to be recovered, the case received attention from the global news media. The recovery was funded by the West Bengal government, with the cost reportedly touching $92,000. A recovery team of six hired Sherpas went to find the deceased men the following year and carry them down.

“Coincidentally, I was on Everest at the same time when Gautam da and his team were attempting the summit,” Siddhanta notes. “On one hand, I had successfully summited, but my climb was deeply tinged with the sorrow of seeing what happened to Gautam da and his friends, especially since I had met them before their push to the summit.”

“It’s a lot of money to climb Mount Everest and the Bengal team had skipped an acclimatisation in a bid to summit. It was their third attempt that year and if this was called off, it would have been a huge financial loss for them, since an expedition can cost at least Rs 20 lakhs per person depending on the tour operator. I passed them on my descent when they were still on their way up. The climbers must have remained in the ‘death zone’, notorious for the harsh conditions, for too long. Once they were left dead, their bodies remained on Everest for a year because any retrieval should happen in the short window between the last of the season’s summit attempts and the start of the summer monsoon that unleashes in the Himalayas, shutting down the region.”

There are emotional and religious considerations, too, when recovering a body. Some cultures, for instance, place greater importance on the performance of last rites. Emotionally too, for families it might be difficult to find closure when the body of a deceased mountaineer remains lost and abandoned in the heights.

And so, Anshu Jamsenpa, the first Indian woman to scale the Everest summit twice, believes that how the family of the climber seeks closure should play a big role in deciding whether the body should be recovered.

“I don’t think there is one answer,” she notes. “Some families come to terms with the fact that their loved one is gone in the mountains and over the years, they may have healed and learned to live with that reality. In the case of ‘Green Boots’, bringing back his body after thirty years could bring back emotions and memories the family may have put away for a long time. But after thirty years, being able to bring back a loved one home and giving them a proper farewell by performing the last rites can certainly be very meaningful for the family.”

In an interview to the BBC, Morup’s wife, Konchak Yangskit, now 75, said, “"On some days, before I went to sleep, I would think that there'd be a knock on the door tonight and that when I opened, he would be there…When he comes home, I will ask him: 'Where were you all these years?',”. She also said that since she didn’t see the dead body, “it was difficult for me to believe” that he had died.

Emotions aside, in some cases, recovery of a body is also needed to prove a death so that benefits can be provided to a family in desperate need of financial support. “There are some global insurances that cover the cost of the body retrieval, which can easily be about Rs 2 crores nowadays,” Siddhanta says.

But the physical constraints are the most challenging, with the altitude and the lack of oxygen at the heights escalating every risk manifold.

The recovery process involves more than simply getting the body off the mountain. High-altitude body recovery on Mount Everest is both a highly dangerous and expensive operation, costing between $40,000 and $100,000, owing to premium hazardous-duty fees for elite Sherpas and the massive volume of oxygen supplies required, say those in the know. For instance, each crew member requires multiple cylinders, which can cost up to $20,000 just for oxygen. A recovery team typically has six to ten Sherpas, say climbers.

In the ‘death zone’ above 8,000 meters, human bodies remain frozen solid and become encased in ice, ballooning their weight to over 150 kilograms. This requires the Sherpas to manually chip out, rig and physically haul the body down treacherous, near-vertical slopes. Because the thin air prevents helicopters from flying directly to the summit, the rescue crew must risk severe hypoxia and exhaustion to drag the remains down to Camp 2 (6,400 meters) before a safe aerial extraction and repatriation can occur. Which probably explains why, according to reports, such attempts have only picked up in the past decade, when improved mountaineering gear and technology would likely have helped provide some support in locating and retrieving bodies.

It is also easy to understand the mountaineering community’s respect for the Sherpas in situations like these.

“In the mountains, the Sherpas are like Superman,” Siddhanta says. “Nobody has the power to bring down someone from the mountains except them.”

Jamsenpa, too, says she is very aware of the difficulties involved in recovering a body because just to climb the mountain is so tough. “At extreme altitudes, even simple physical tasks become exhausting,” she explains. The steep exposed terrain, extreme cold, ice and very limited oxygen make the recovery challenging. Depending on where the body is located, the retrieval team has to free the frozen remains from the ice and then determine how to transport them downhill without causing further damage to the body. If there is enough snow, it is easier to slide the body on a makeshift toboggan, but the terrain can be extremely challenging.

Then there is the weather. Conditions in the mountains change very quickly and something that may be manageable one moment becomes extremely dangerous within a short time. A sudden change in the weather can put the recovery team at risk. “So, there is a very careful balance between the family’s wish and the safety of the people carrying out the recovery,” Jamsenpa says. “We cannot risk creating another tragedy while trying to recover someone who has already lost their life.”

If anything persuades the Sherpas to undertake the recovery, despite their own religious and spiritual reservations about disturbing the dead, it is the compensation they receive for taking on such a challenging and dangerous task. “Most of the Sherpas’ families are dependent on them for survival so whatever be the price asked, it is justified when you look at the risks they take,” Mohite says. Although the success rates of retrieval have increased over the years, lifting dead bodies from over 8,000m is always a dangerous mission. “Sherpas give their lives for you so it is best to listen to their advice,” Siddhanta says.

Mohite says it takes a guide just a day or two with the climber to understand their fitness and skills. One’s survival depends not only on physical and mental training but also on the ability to acclimatise and adapt. “Survival skills are important, but we have to take care of our health. I make sure to look after myself properly because even if there is a cough, then my energy is draining at the altitude. If my Sherpa tells me to call off a summit attempt, I will trust him completely. There is no shame in going back. I always say that the mountains will not go anywhere. I just need to come back.”

If the climber is stuck somewhere and unable to climb down, then the mountains are unforgiving. The night that Ghosh and his team members didn’t return, climbers in Camp 4 claim they heard someone cry out for help almost the whole night.

Siddhanta recalls, “When I heard the cries carried by the winds, I wanted to go out and search, but my Sherpa stopped me, asking if I was willing to give my oxygen cylinder to the stranded climber and die instead. With limited oxygen, the answer is brutal. I settled down in my tent, helpless and hoping he would be alive.” It turned out that the climber was Paul, who was discovered alive the next morning. But after 32 hours in the mountains without oxygen, he was in a hopeless condition and died subsequently.

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While his body was also retrieved the following year, body recovery is not a rescue operation. In August 2026, a retrieval team recovered the bodies of five climbers from Yalung Ri, a 5,630m peak in Nepal. They had been killed and buried by an avalanche in November 2025. The recovery came about nine months after the accident, illustrating how difficult it can be to retrieve bodies even from mountains considerably lower. Ultimately, however, recovery often comes down to whether there is money for it and a willingness to risk more lives to bring a body home.

“When I was younger, I thought it was best to leave the body in the mountains because the person is where he or she wanted to be,” Mohite ponders. “But now I am older and I believe that for closure, a family should get the body home.”