2019 Mount Everest Deaths

Submission 4,800

Overview

2019 Mount Everest Deaths refer to the high amount of fatalities that have occurred on Mount Everest in 2019, particularly between May 17th and May 28th of that year. It has been argued that these deaths have been caused by intense overcrowding of the mountain, which has led to criticism of the Nepalese government for not capping the amount of climbers of the mountain at one time and of the climbers themselves for not understanding the difficulty of their undertaking.

Background

On May 17th, 2019, Indian climber Ravi^[1] died while climbing Mount Everest. Over the following ten days, ten more climbers perished: Seamus Lawless, Kalpana Das, Nihal Bagwan, Donald Lynn Cash, Anjali Kulkarni, Kevin Hynes, Dhruba Bista, Ernst Landgraf, and Christopher John Kulish. During the week of May 20th, climbers entered a queue to reach the summit in an area known to climbers as the "death zone" due to its high altitude, where humans cannot survive for long without extra oxygen supplies. A photo of the queue was taken by Twitter user and climber @Nimsdai^[2] (shown below).

Developments

The death of Christopher John Kulish, an American lawyer from Colorado, helped the overcrowding of Everest receive media attention, as outlets including CNN,^[1] The New York Times,^[3] and BBC^[4] covered the story. Critics have pointed out that the Nepalese government issued a record 381 permits, which cost $11,000 each, to climbers this climbing season, which helped contribute to the overcrowding.^[5] Nepal has stated it will not limit permits in future climbing seasons. Additionally, storms limited the ideal climbing dates to only a few days, which contributed to the crowding. There are also competing companies of Nepalese climbing guides, some of which have been criticized as inexperienced to handle situations like the extended queue at the summit.^[6] Climber Elia Saikaly described literally stepping over bodies to reach the summit.^[7] He also argued those issuing climbing permits should test the skill of who they are issuing to, as inexperienced climbers may have led to the overcrowding, and thus the fatalities.

Online Presence

There have been some jokes online about the fatalities. The Onion^[8] posted a satirical article titled "World Populace Actually Fine With Rich People Dying On Mount Everest." Twitter user @PatrickLenton^[9] tweeted a similar joke, gaining over 70 retweets and 380 likes (shown below, left). User @Boring_as_heck made a joke about people getting caught in the "death zone," gaining over 1,200 retweets and 12,000 likes (shown below, right)