Everest with its 8,849 meters is a cemetery:expedition to recover hundreds of corpses

The melting of ice and perennial snow due to climate change is causing hundreds of corpses to emerge on the mountain.Nepal attempts a recovery campaign

BOLOGNA – An open-air cemetery, in which hundreds of corpses are emerging.People who died trying to climb Everest, the highest mountain in the world with its 8,849 meters, almost 200 more than K2) and then their bodies remained there, ending up in crevasses or buried and hidden by snow and perennial ice.Which until now were precisely 'perennial'.But things are changing, given that climate changes are triggering an unprecedented phenomenon of melting ice.And this resulted, as a consequence, in the surfacing of hundreds of corpses. Mountaineers, climbers, adventurers.And that's why a team of experts decided to set out to try one a recovery mission.The objective is precisely to recover the bodies of people found dead and bring them down to Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital.This is an expedition that is tiring, dangerous and also very expensive, which was entrusted to Aditya Karki, army major in charge of a team of 12 soldiers and 18 climbers.They have also been identified 11 tons of waste, between tents, equipment, empty cylinders clutter the road to the summit.The area searched also includes the hill that divides Everest and Lhotse and Nuptse.

11 HOURS TO FREE A CORPSE

So far they have been recovered five frozen bodies, two of whom have been pre-identified pending “detailed testing” to confirm their identity, according to Rakesh Gurung of Nepal's tourism ministry.The mountaineer who led the expedition, Tshiring Jangbu, said that “It took 11 hours to free one of the bodies“, which was stuck inside the ice.He was freed with hot water and then an ax was needed to break the ice and mountain.The perpetual snows that have covered the bodies all these years have allowed them to survive, including their equipment.Those who have seen them explain that some bodies "are still almost as they were at the moment of death, dressed in full equipment, with crampons and harness".

HOW MANY DIED ON EVEREST

Since the beginning of expeditions in the 1920s more than 300 people have died on the summit of the Himalayas. Eight in the last season alone, unfortunately counted among the record ones for the number of deaths.For 617 climbers who reached the summit, eight mountaineers fell.Some remained hidden, perhaps falling into crevasses, while others are clearly visible.The protagonists of the expedition spoke of mountaineers dressed in climbing equipment and suits.And they explained that they had given the corpses nicknames, such as "Green Boots" or "Sleeping Beauty".

THE “DEATH ZONE”

Many of the bodies emerging on Everest have been spotted in what is known as the "death zone."It is a part of the mountain, over 7,600 meters high, where oxygen is very scarce and the air is rarefied.A condition that greatly increases the risk of fatal illnesses

Not everyone liked the idea of ​​the recovery mission.There are mountaineers, like , who have harshly criticized the initiative:the mountaineer Fausto De Stefani (who in his life climbed all 14 peaks in the world higher than 8 thousand metres), for example, expressed strong disapproval in an interview in the morning in Padua:“They should be left up there“, he says, calling the recovery campaign “nonsense”.And remember:“I found them too and buried them.”