Story highlights
- Alpine Ascents International abandons this year's expedition
- The Seattle-based company lost five sherpas in the avalanche
- Organizers decide not to put "pressure" on expeditions
- There are now 13 people confirmed dead and three missing
Just days away from the beginning of the busiest climbing season of the year at Mount Everest, expeditions are unsure whether climbs on the world's highest peak will go ahead.
On Friday, 13 people were killed in an avalanche. Three days later, three people are still missing and feared dead after the single deadliest accident on Mount Everest.
Alpine Ascents International has decided to abandon its expedition on that peak in the wake of the accident. The Seattle-based company lost five sherpas in the avalanche.
"Making the decision was hard. We felt this was right for us. Not everyone is going to be happy with our decision," said Gordon Janow, a founding member of Alpine Ascents. "I'm not looking to profit from this season."
Ang Tshering Sherpa of Asian Trekking, which has about two dozen foreign climbers at Everest Base Camp, said his company is still weighing what to do.
"There is a lot of sadness at the moment, and it could be up to a week before a decision is made," he said.
A meeting of Nepali expedition organizers Sunday decided to leave it to the discretion of the individual expeditions whether to abandon the climbs or to go ahead. The meeting also decided not to put any "pressure" on expeditions to make a decision.
"We cannot force the expeditions to make any decision," said Madhu Sudan Burlakoti, chief of the Tourism Industry Division of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Civil Aviation.
Avalanche struck just before busy season 01:30
Veteran climber on Everest avalanche 04:16
See youngest to ever climb Mount Everest 01:03
Climber: Avalanche victim was my equal 03:42
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
George Mallory and Edward Felix Norton reach 27,000 feet on the northeast ridge of Everest in 1922. They failed to reach the summit.
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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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Shipton leads an expedition exploring the Khumbu Glacier icefall in November 1951.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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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!"
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
Whittaker's team members climb Everest's West Ridge in 1963.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
French climber Jean-Marc Boivin becomes the first person to paraglide from Everest's summit in September 1998.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Photos: Exploring Mount Everest
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.
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Mountaineer Ralf Dujmovits took this image of a long line of climbers heading up Everest in May 2012.
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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.
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Yuichiro Miura, became the oldest person to summit Everest, on May 23, 2013, at the age of 80.
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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.
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The avalanche took place just above base camp in the Khumbu Ice Fall.
Climbers and guides had been setting the ropes for the route, acclimating and preparing the camps along the route when the avalanche hit.
The path on the glacier has been destroyed by the avalanche and a new path will have to be made, Sherpa said.
The operators have decided to let the "icefall doctors" decide whether to carve another path on Khumbu Ice Fall -- and have promised to not penalize them if they refuse.
A question of finance
Ultimately, the guides may decide to forge ahead.
For many, the guides are the only breadwinners of the family.
Ngima Sherpa, 26, for example, supported his three younger siblings and mother from the money he made taking foreign nationals around the mountain.
He was among the 13 dead whose bodies were taken around Kathmandu in a funeral procession Monday.
Sherpas make up to US$6,000 per season. They also usually get a summit bonus if their clients reach the top of the 8,848-meter (29,000-feet) mountain.
Paid in full
About 334 foreign climbers have been given permission to climb Everest over the next couple of months, with an estimated 400 guides helping them.
On Sunday, the sherpas decided they want to be paid in full even if the climbs are abandoned. Foreign climbers spend between $40,000 and $90,000 each in their attempt to scale the mountain.
It will be up to the climbers whether they want to pay the sherpas for abandoned climbs, said Dambar Parajuli, president of the Expedition Organizers Association.
"We cannot compel the foreigners, but they also have their own humanity," he said.
So far, the government has paid Rs. 40,000 ($662) to the families of each of the 13 dead for funeral expenses. The expedition operators want Rs. 1 million each from the government.
The government makes about $3 million from royalties on Everest each spring season.
