Five Indian climbers attempting to scale the world’s tallest peak, Mount Everest in Nepal, have gone missing, Nepal Police said on Sunday.
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Paresh Nath and Goutam Ghosh have been missing since Saturday and were last seen near the Everest summit, the expedition organiser said.
A female climber who made it her mission to prove vegans were capable of extreme physical challenges has died near the summit of Everest.
Nepal’s devastating natural disaster previous year caused an avalanche that killed 19 people at base camp, and in 2014, an avalanche above base camp killed 16 Sherpa guides.
This was Arnold’s fifth attempt at the summit, failing to reach the peak in 2014 and 2015.
Since the 2016 climbing season began on May 11, almost 400 people have successfully reached the world’s highest mountain.
Mere hours after Arnold passed, Australian climber Maria Strydom also showed signs of altitude sickness before dying Saturday afternoon, Seven Summit Treks agency spokesman Pasang Phurba told AP.
A second climber also passed away on Saturday, making these the first two Everest related deaths of 2016.
Strydom lived in Melbourne, where she worked at the university as a finance lecturer from 2006.
Following Dr Strydom’s death on the 1,300 foot push to Everest’s summit, her mother Maritha posted on Facebook: “My handsome girl”.
Meanwhile, Lhapka Sherpa, 42, climbed the mountain for a seventh time, breaking her own record for ascents of Everest by a woman.
Mr Arnold is believed to have had enough bottled oxygen and climbing partners but complained of getting weak during the team’s descent and died on Friday night near South Col before being able to reach lower altitude.
She gave an interview with the school in March detailing her ambition to climb the highest seven summits on each of the continents.
Her mother, Maritha Strydom, who had been posting updates about her daughter and son-in-law’s expedition, said on Facebook: “I’m just to devastated to communicate, sorry”. An natural disaster killed 18 climbers past year and an avalanche took the lives of 16 guides in 2014, notes BBC News.
A third man, Subash Paul, 43, from India, has since died after reaching the mountain’s summit, reportedly from exhaustion.
The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, said Strydom’s death was a tragedy, and travellers must understand the risks they were taking in trying to climb Everest.
The 43-year-old mountaineer died Sunday.
Thousands of people have summited Mount Everest since it was first conquered by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on May 29, 1953.
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“We are liaising with authorities and our heartfelt thoughts and support are extended to Maria’s family, her friends, colleagues and students”.
