High hopes and broken dreams
This year’s Mount Everest “summit window” was brief and it was deadly. By the time the window closed for the final time on May 29, 12 people had died, making 2019 one of the deadliest years on record.
As the surviving climbers and their teams packed up and made their way home, they left behind another tragic chapter in Himalayan mountaineering history and more bodies on the mountain graveyard.
Ever since Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to summit Everest in 1953, a legion of mountaineers and adventurers have been inspired to follow their lead up the 8,850m peak straddling the border of Nepal and Tibet.
Of the 12 fatalities this season, all but two perished on the Nepalese side. Of the others, two are missing, presumed dead. And all bar one of the victims were foreign climbers.
The bid for the summit is often assumed to be the most hazardous part of the expedition.
For foreigners, however, the descent is the most treacherous element of the journey.
Source
ABC News
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