Mount Everest deaths: Body of 5th climber located

The body of one of two Indian nationals who went missing on Mount Everest last week has been located, the managing director of Trekking Camp Nepal said Friday.

Paresh Chandra Nath is the fifth person to die climbing the world’s highest peak this season.

A team of Sherpas located Nath’s body Friday morning but were unable to carry it to base camp because of weather conditions, Wangchu Sherpa told CNN.

Another member of Nath’s climbing team, Goutam Ghosh, is missing, Wangchu Sherpa said.

The two men were part of a team of four Indian climbers and four Sherpas. Indian national Subash Paul died at Base Camp II – at an elevation of about 24,600 feet – Sunday from altitude sickness.

Avalanches killed 35 climbers on Mount Everest the past two years – including 16 in one devastating day in 2014. At least one person has died climbing the mountain in Nepal every year since 1990.

And now the 2016 climbing season has claimed its first victims.

The recent deaths – coming so quickly on the heels of one another – have rattled climbers who are beginning their descent as the Everest climbing season nears its end. April and May are the most common months to attempt a climb because there tends to be less wind. Regardless, the climate on the mountain is brutal. Temperatures range from -31 to -4 Fahrenheit.

April was the first month of climbing since all ascent was halted after the catastrophic earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015 and a deadly avalanche that killed 16 Sherpas in one day in 2014. More than 200 climbers have died since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first official ascent in 1953.

Everest summit reached for first time after two years

Last week, crew member Phurba Sherpa (no relation to the journalist of the same name) fell to his death. The 25-year-old had been working to fix a route about 150 meters near the summit when he fell Thursday, according to Mingma Sherpa, the Nepal rescue team leader who was at the Everest Base Camp.

The Sherpa people are an ethnic group from Nepal who have lived in the high altitudes of the Himalayas for generations. They have long served as guides whose local expertise has been invaluable for foreigners attempting Everest climbs.

Eric Arnold, 36, of the Netherlands, died Friday night while heading back after a successful summit on Everest, according to Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, the owner of Seven Summit Treks. A heart attack was suspected, he said.

Eric Arnold on a climb.

Arnold was a triathlete based in Rotterdam, according to his Twitter bio.

An Australian woman, Maria Strydom, who was also traveling with the Seven Summit Treks, started suffering altitude sickness last Saturday. She had reached Camp IV, the final camp before the summit.

A rescue attempt failed to reach Maria Strydom.

Strydom, 34, could not climb any higher and a rescue attempt to reach her failed, according to Tashi Sherpa. The finance professor at Monash Business School in Australia died Saturday before she could come back down to Camp III.

Strydom gave an interview with the school in March detailing her ambition to climb the highest summit on each of the seven continents. She had already climbed Denali in Alaska, Aconcagua in Argentina, Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey and Kilimanjaro in Africa. She had planned to climb Everest with her husband, inspired in part by questions the couple received about their vegan diet.

Her mother, Maritha Strydom, had been following her daughter’s progress on her ascent through a series of satellite “pings” from her phone.

“I was worried when the pings stopped, and we started calling but no one could give us any answers,” Strydom told CNN in an interview from Brisbane, Australia, this week. “So my other daughter … Googled and found in the Himalayan Times that my daughter had passed away.”

Strydom believes her daughter was in the “death zone” for too long.

What can happen to your body on Everest

The death zone refers to altitudes higher than 8,000 meters (about 26,200 feet), where the risk of dying significantly climbs. There is little oxygen here, so altitude sickness is common and can be deadly. Temperatures tumble, winds intensify and frostbite can hit any exposed part of the body. The ground is icy, so falls are not uncommon.

“No one is supposed to stay in the death zone longer than 16 to 20 hours. If you stay there longer you will be dead,” Strydom told CNN.

Nath’s climbing companion Paul, 44, died Sunday at Base Camp II from altitude sickness, according to Wangchu Sherpa.

“It is not clear what happened. We believe the weather suddenly deteriorated at some point, and the team lost direction,” Wanchu Sherpa said.

A fourth climber from the team, Sunita Hazra, was rescued and was undergoing treatment at base camp.

The journey to the summit of Mount Everest is a challenge an increasing number have taken on since the summit was first reached in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Until the late 1970s, only a handful of climbers per year reached the summit. By 2012 that number rose to more than 500.

Explorers are seen in 1922 at Camp II on the East Rongbuk Glacier. That same year, seven Sherpas were killed when they were caught in an avalanche during an expedition led by George Mallory.

George Mallory and Edward Felix Norton reach 27,000 feet on the northeast ridge of Everest in 1922. They failed to reach the summit.

Mallory returns to Everest In June 1924. He's seen here with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine at base camp. This is the last photo of the the two before they disappeared on the mountain. Mallory's body was found 75 years later, showing signs of a fatal fall.

Mountaineers are seen preparing to leave their camp during one of Eric Shipton's early expeditions on Everest in the 1930s. While Shipton never made it to the summit, his exploration of the mountain paved the way for others.

Shipton leads an expedition exploring the Khumbu Glacier icefall in November 1951.

Shipton is also known for discovering and photographing footprints of an unknown animal or person, like this one taken in 1951. Many attributed these to the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman.

Edmund Hillary sits at base camp in May 1953 before heading out on what would become the first successful ascent to the top of the world.

Hillary and Nepalese-Indian mountaineer Tenzing Norgay climb beyond a crevasse on Mount Everest in 1953. Upon meeting George Lowe, who had climbed up to meet the descending duo, Hillary reportedly exclaimed, "Well George, we knocked the bastard off!"

Members of a U.S. expedition team and Sherpas are shown with their climbing gear on Everest. The team, led by Jim Whittaker, reached the top on May 1, 1963, becoming the first Americans to do so.

Whittaker's team members climb Everest's West Ridge in 1963.

On April 5, 1970, six Sherpas died in an avalanche at the Khumbu Icefall. The icefall, at the head of the Khumbu Glacier, seen here in 2003, is one of the more treacherous areas of the ascent.

British Army soldiers and mountaineers John "Brummie" Stokes and Michael "Bronco" Lane above the icefall at the entrance to the West Col (or western pass) of Mount Everest during their successful ascent of the mountain. The joint British-Nepalese army expedition reached the summit on May 16, 1976.

In 1978, Reinhold Messner makes the first ascent without supplemental oxygen. Messner is seen here at Munich Airport showing reporters his frozen thumb after climbing to the top of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, alone and without an oxygen mask.

French climber Jean-Marc Boivin becomes the first person to paraglide from Everest's summit in September 1998.

The 1996 climbing season was one of the deadliest, when 15 people died on Everest, eight in a single storm in May of that year.

Francys Distefano-Arsentiev became the first American woman to reach Everest's summit without bottled oxygen on May 23, 1998. However, she and her husband, Sergei Arsentiev, never made it off the mountain. They died after becoming separated while attempting to descend in the dark. At least one climbing party found Francys barely conscious, but there was nothing they could do to save her. Her husband's body was found years later. It is believed he fell while trying to save his wife.

Pemba Dorje Sherpa and Moni Mulepati became the first people to get married on Everest's summit, on March 30, 2005. The couple are seen here waving from base camp on June 2, 2005.

Sherpa climbers pose at Everest Base Camp after collecting garbage during the Everest cleanup expedition on May 28, 2010. A group of 20 Nepalese climbers collected nearly two tons of garbage in a high-risk expedition to clean up the world's highest peak.

Mountaineer Ralf Dujmovits took this image of a long line of climbers heading up Everest in May 2012.

Jordan Romero became the youngest person to reach the summit, at age 13, on May 22, 2013. Jordan, right, is seen here on the summit with one of the Sherpas who helped him make the ascent.

Yuichiro Miura, became the oldest person to summit Everest, on May 23, 2013, at the age of 80.

Malavath Poorna, left, holds up her national flag on May 24, when the 13-year-old daughter of poor Indian farmers became the youngest girl to climb Everest.

Exploring Mount Everest

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Phurba Sherpa reported from Nepal; Ray Sanchez, Brandon Griggs, Ashley Fantz, Madison Park and Tiffany Ap also contributed to this report.