Mount Everest Death Rate: Increasing or Decreasing?

The world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, is as beautiful as it is deadly. At an elevation of 8848.86 meters from sea level, Mt. Everest is one of the deadliest mountains to climb. Mount Everest Death Rate can’t be exactly predicted.

At least 300 people have died in Mount Everest during the expedition, 8 of those casualties happened during the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, one of the deadliest disasters after the 2015 Nepal Earthquake.

The major causes of Mount Everest Death are:

• Avalanches

• Falls

• Winds

• Serac collapse

• Exposure 

• Frostbite

• Health problems, etc.

Since the expedition started the only year when no casualties happened was in 1997, a year when only two mountaineers reached the summit, and in 2020, a year when no one climbed Everest, courtesy of Covid-19 in Nepal.

Many of the dead bodies are still buried in Everest in an unknown location.

In a mountaineering term ‘a death zone’ is an area above 8000m. so, you would definitely have to cross this area during the Everest expedition.

This is also the area where most casualties happen.

People die in the death zone due to two reasons

• Directly – due to loss of vital functions
• Indirectly – due to physical weakening or stressful decision that leads to Mount Everest death.

The atmospheric pressure in the death zone is only about 5.16 psi (356 millibars), where supplementary oxygen is necessary for most people.

In the Mount Everest death zone, the human body cannot adapt to the inhumane atmospheric pressure, due to which climbers don’t spend more than 5 minutes on the summit, on average.

The loss of consciousness, deterioration of bodily functions are also the main reason for casualties in the Mount Everest death zone.

The most tragic events in Everest

• 16 Sherpas lost their life due to the avalanche in the Khumbu Ice Fall On April 18, 2014
• 19 people died (locals + foreigners) in the most hazardous event in Nepal’s history on April 25, 2015 – after 7.8 earthquakes hit Nepal. This is the deadliest single-day casualties’ count in Everest’s history ever.
• In 2019, a total of 11 climbers lost their lives during the expedition.

Recovering a dead body is more dangerous than climbing Everest, thus most of the dead bodies are still in Everest, untouched and undiscovered.

Check this link to see the list of all the dead bodies in Everest.