This photograph taken on April 20, 2015 shows a view of Mount Everest (C-top) towering over the Nupse, from the village of Tembuche in the Khumbu region of northeastern Nepal. Sherpas, thought to be of Tibetan origin, have a long and proud history of mountaineering, and the term today is used for all Nepalese high-altitude porters and guides assisting climbing expeditions around Everest. The April 25 quake, which left more than 7,800 people dead across Nepal, was the Himalayan nation's deadliest disaster in over 80 years, and triggered an avalanche which killed 18 people on Everest, leading mountaineering companies to call off their spring expeditions, marking the second year with virtually no summits to the roof of the world. AFP PHOTO / ROBERTO SCHMIDT (Photo credit should read ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/AFP/Getty Images
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A Sherpa, a Dutch man, an Australian woman and two Indian men are among the deaths
One Indian climber remains missing
CNN
—
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 1900.
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.
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, 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 at 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.
from twitter
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. She had reached Camp IV, the final camp before the summit.
A rescue attempt failed to reach Maria Strydom.
from Monash University
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, who had been posting updates about her daughter and son-in-law’s expedition, said on Facebook: “I’m just too devastated to communicate, sorry.”
“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.
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.
Subash Paul, 44, died at Base Camp II from altitude sickness, according to Wangchu Sherpa, Managing Director of Trekking Camp Nepal.
“It is not clear what happened. We believe the weather suddenly deteriorated at some point, and the team lost direction,” Wanchu Sherpa said.
The fourth climber from the team, Sunita Hazra, was rescued and is undergoing treatment at base camp.
Since the 2016 climbing season opened on Everest, about 300 people have scaled, according to data from Everest Base Camp as of Saturday.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images)
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Photo12/UIG/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Captain Noel/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
George Mallory and Edward Felix Norton reach 27,000 feet on the northeast ridge of Everest in 1922. They failed to reach the summit.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Express Newspapers/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
Shipton leads an expedition exploring the Khumbu Glacier icefall in November 1951.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Express Newspapers/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
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!"
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Henry S. Hall, Jr. American Alpine Club Library, Barry Corbet Personal Papers and Films/AP
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Henry S. Hall, Jr. American Alpine Club Library, Barry Corbet Personal Papers and Films/AP
Whittaker's team members climb Everest's West Ridge in 1963.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Keystone/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
French climber Jean-Marc Boivin becomes the first person to paraglide from Everest's summit in September 1998.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Chip HIRES/GAMMA/
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Lexington Herald-Leader/AP
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
DEVENDRA M SINGH/AFP/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
NAMGYAL SHERPA/AFP/Getty Images
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
RALF DUJMOVITS/Outside Magazine
Mountaineer Ralf Dujmovits took this image of a long line of climbers heading up Everest in May 2012.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
courtesy Team Jordan Romero
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.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
/MIURA DOLPHINS Co., Ltd/AP
Yuichiro Miura, became the oldest person to summit Everest, on May 23, 2013, at the age of 80.
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Andhra Pradesh Information Center/AP
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.
Phurba Sherpa reported from Nepal; Ray Sanchez, Brandon Griggs, Ashley Fantz, Madison Park and Tiffany Ap also contributed to this report.
