from the NYT: 2 incredible pix https://imgur.com/a/rQKtX22
and https://imgur.com/a/KIFfYAO
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<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>NEW DELHI — [By <span class=”css-1baulvz”>Kai Schultz</span>, <span class=”css-1baulvz”>Jeffrey Gettleman</span>, <span class=”css-1baulvz”>Mujib Mashal</span> and <span class=”css-1baulvz”>Bhadra Sharma]</span></p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>Ed Dohring, a doctor from Arizona, had dreamed his whole life of reaching the top of Mount Everest. But when he summited a few days ago, he was shocked by what he saw.</p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>Climbers were pushing and shoving to take selfies. The flat part of the summit, which he estimated at about the size of two Ping-Pong tables, was packed with 15 or 20 people. To get up there, he had to wait hours in a line, chest to chest, one puffy jacket after the next, on an icy, rocky ridge with a several-thousand foot drop.</p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>He even had to step around the frozen body of a woman who had just died.</p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>“It was scary,” he said by telephone from Kathmandu, Nepal, where he was resting in a hotel room. “It was like a zoo.”</p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>This has been one of the deadliest climbing seasons on Everest, with at least 10 deaths. And at least some seem to have been avoidable.</p>
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<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>The problem hasn’t been avalanches, blizzards or high winds. Veteran climbers and industry leaders blame having too many people on the mountain, in general, and too many inexperienced climbers, in particular.</p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>Fly-by-night adventure companies are taking up untrained climbers who pose a risk to everyone on the mountain. And the Nepalese government, hungry for every climbing dollar it can get, has issued more permits than Everest can safely handle, some experienced mountaineers say.</p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>Add to that Everest’s inimitable appeal to a growing body of thrill-seekers the world over. And the fact that Nepal, one of Asia’s poorest nations and the site of most Everest climbs, has a long record of shoddy regulations, mismanagement and corruption.</p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>The result is a crowded, unruly scene reminiscent of “Lord of the Flies” — at 29,000 feet. At that altitude, a delay of even an hour or two can mean life or death.</p>
<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>To reach the summit, climbers shed every pound of gear they can and take with them just enough canisters of compressed oxygen to make it to the top and back down. It is hard to think straight at that altitude, climbers say.</p>
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<p class=”m_2146172724893749705gmail-css-18icg9x m_2146172724893749705evys1bk0″>According to Sherpas and climbers, some of the deaths this year were caused by people getting held up in the long lines on the last 1,000 feet or so of the climb, unable to get up and down fast enough to replenish their oxygen supply. Others were simply not fit enough to be on the mountain in the first place.</p>
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