Strydom and Paul also apparently suffered altitude sickness, with Strydom dying on Saturday and Paul succumbing on Monday.
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A helicopter on Thursday retrieved the body of a Dutch climber who died last week on Mount Everest, while attempts were being made to retrieve the bodies of two other climbers and locate two more who went missing on the world’s tallest mountain.
Pemba Sherpa of the Seven Summit Treks agency in Kathmandu said a helicopter waited all day at base camp for weather to clear so it could fly to a higher camp but Ms Strydom’s body remained at Camp 3.
Tourism Ministry authorities on Tuesday confirmed the death of two Indian climbers who had been missing on Mount Everest. Meanwhile, per the Sydney Morning Herald, Strydom’s sister says her family is angry about what they say is a lack of official communication (and condolences) from the expedition group.
If the weather allowed, the team would try their best to conduct the search for missing climbers – Paresh Chandra Nath (58) and Goutam Ghosh (51) – as well as bring Pal’s body back from higher camps to the Camp II, Wangchu Sherpa, the managing director at Trekking Camp Nepal, said.
Deaths are not uncommon on Everest and the number of fatalities this year is close to average.
This year almost 400 climbers reached the summit on May 11 and Nepal government had issued permit to only 289 climber.
Climbing Mount Everest has become increasingly risky in recent years.
It was feared that the disasters would drive away climbers, but hundreds of climbers and thousands of foreign trekkers returned this spring to Nepal, which has eight of the highest mountains in the world.
Even the most experienced of climbers can die on Mount Everest, which is widely known as the world’s most risky summit.
Competition among low-priced local companies chasing a business that has boomed in recent years and is no longer dominated by worldwide outfits has meanwhile undermined safety standards, they say. The climbers are accompanied on the mountain by around 400 local Nepalese Sherpa guides.
Nepal and the Everest climbing community had been anxious for a successful season this year. There are no regulations to require climbers to have any past experience before trying Everest.
Ms Strydom’s mother, Maritha, praised the expedition leader and sherpas in an emotional Facebook post last night, writing: “Thank you, thank you, thank you Arnold Coster and all the fantastic Sherpas, for risking your life’s to give me the greatest gift, my baby girl Marisa Elizabeth”.
Maria Strydom, 34, had reached the final camp from the summit before she and her husband, Robert Gropel, both began suffering from high-altitude pulmonary edema, which caused fluid to build up in Strydom’s brain, the Washington Post reported.
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She lived a vegan lifestyle, and had described her attempt to climb Mount Everest as means prove that vegan people were as healthy as normal people. The school posted on Facebook that the community was deeply saddened by her death. “They are all people who thought they could go up and down”. “I think next year is going to be extremely busy”.
