Daily Times

KATHMANDU: Two Nepali sherpa guides have died of suspected altitude sickness in the Himalayas, a tour operator said Wednesday. The guides were assisting an 11-member team on the 8,481-metre (27,825-feet) tall Makalu peak, the fifth-highest mountain in the world. Parsuram Karki of the Thamserku Expedition tour agency said the two men had complained of altitude sickness on Tuesday night at Camp II, located at 6,700 metres, but died as their team members were taking them down. “Their bodies have been brought to the base camp,” Karki told AFP. Altitude sickness strikes when people ascend heights too quickly, with the decreased atmosphere pressure causing headaches, fatigue and dizziness. In separate incidents, two trekkers — one Japanese and the other South Korean — died of altitude sickness last month while on their way down from Nepal’s Everest base camp. Every year hundreds of people from around the world travel to the Himalayas in Nepal for the brief spring climbing season, when conditions are at their best. Mountaineering is a major revenue-earner for impoverished Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000 metres. The mountain guide was part of a rope-fixing team preparing the final stretch to the 8,850-metre (29,035-foot) summit, running along the Southeast Ridge route, for teams to make their own attempts in the next few days. “Sherra Gyalgen Sherpa reached the top of Sagarmatha at 5.05 pm (1120 GMT),” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, chief of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), using the mountain’s Nepali name. “In all nine sherpa climbers scaled the top,” tourism official Gyanendra Shrestha told Reuters from Everest Base Camp. Laying the final stretch of ropes was delayed slightly on Wednesday by heavy snow high on the mountain. The ascents were the first in three years after two years of tragedy halted climbing on Everest. An avalanche in the treacherous Khumbu Icefall killed 16 mountain guides in 2014, and 18 people died a year ago when an earthquake sent a massive snowslide careening into Base Camp. In total, 9,000 people were killed across Nepal in the 7.8 magnitude quake whose first anniversary the country has just commemorated. Climbing outfit Jagged Globe tweeted that its Everest team was at Camp 3 and in good spirits. “If rope fixed to summit today, they’ll move to South Col Thursday for summit attempt,” it said. At least 289 climbers and their guides were at different high camps waiting for a “window” of clear weather to open for a final ascent, officials said. Multiple teams, perhaps 100 people, were looking to summit from May 14 to 16, veteran mountaineer and blogger Alan Arnette said in a post on Wednesday. Numbers are well below the nearly 700 who submitted in 2013, showing how badly climbing and adventure tourism in the Himalayan nation have been hit by the Everest tragedies and last year’s quake, which destroyed a million homes.