Another deadly Everest spring climbing season – why are so many so eager to reach the summit?

Eight dead, two of whom plunged into thin air when an ice ledge collapsed amid a high-altitude traffic jam – the crowds on Everest keep growing

As author Jon Krakauer wrote after a similar disaster in 1996, ‘Everest has always been a magnet for kooks … and others with a shaky hold on reality’

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Climbers and mountain guides are stranded between the South Summit and the Hillary Step of Mount Everest on May 21 after an ice collapse destroyed the fixed ropes used for climbing. The collapse was responsible for two of the eight known deaths on the peak in the spring climbing season. Photo: Getty Images

Mark Footer

Mark Footer joined the Post in 1999, having been the magazine and book buyer for Tower Records in Hong Kong.

Published: 7:45am, 30 May 2024

The pre-monsoon climbing season in Nepal has come to a close for another year and once again it has been a deadly one.

The spring 2024 death toll among those attempting to summit Everest stands, at the time of writing, at eight, with other fatalities elsewhere in the Nepali Himalayas.

Mongolians Usukhjargal Tsedendamba, 53, and Prevsuren Lkhagvajav, 31, who died after summiting, were the first to perish, on May 13, and Indian Banshi Lal, 46, the latest.

On May 21, Pastenji Sherpa, 23, and Briton Daniel Paterson, 40, fell to their deaths near the Hillary Step – a narrow ridge close to the summit – after reaching the top. The search for their bodies has been complicated by the fact they fell on the Chinese side of the mountain. (Incidentally, China reopened the much less busy Tibetan route to foreigners this year for the first time since closing it in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.)