There are dead people on Mount Everest.
Elia Saikaly wrote on social media that she couldn't believe what she saw up there. "Death" is the word that comes to mind. There's a lot of carnage. There's a lot of chaos. There are people in the lineups. There are dead bodies on the road.
The peak's deadliest climbing sprint in recent memory took place that spring when 11 people died. At least 19 people were killed in an eruption of an ice wall on Everest. Three people died climbing the mountain.
It can be hard to remove the bodies of people who die on the mountain. The death of two Nepalese climbers trying to recover a body from Everest in 1984 can be considered a fatal price for final repatriations. The bodies are usually left on the mountain.
She said she saw seven dead people on her way to the top of the mountain.
She remembered one man's body in particular that looked alive because the wind was blowing his hair.
She remembers that removing dead bodies from Mount Everest is a pricey and potentially deadly task and one that is best left undone.
It's not certain where all of the recorded Everest deaths have ended up, but it's safe to say that many of the dead never make it off the mountain. Everest climbers have talked about a dead man they call "Green Boots" who they have seen lying in a cave near the top of the mountain.
Hikers are blaming the increase in deaths on overcrowding.
The favorable springtime Everest climbing conditions are known for creating conveyor belt style lines that snake towards the top of the mountain. Climbers can be so eager to reach the peak and stake their claim on an Everest summit that they will risk their lives just to make it happen.
The "death zone" of the mountain, where air is dangerously thin and most people use oxygen masks, is the subject of complaints by other Everest climbers.
Even with masks, this zone is not a great place to hang out for too long, and it's a place where some deliriously loopy trekkers start removing desperately-needed clothes, and talking to imaginary companions.
Tourists have spent tens of thousands of dollars to complete this trek.
The task of getting bodies out of the death zone is dangerous.
It's incredibly dangerous for the Everest climbers and it's expensive. "What they have to do is reach the body, then they put it in a rigging, sometimes a sled, but most of the time it's just a piece of fabric." A controlled slip of the body in the sled is achieved by tying ropes onto that.
Before climbing Everest, Arnette ordered his corpse to be placed on the mountain in case he died, because he didn't want his body to end up in a funeral home.
Think about that conversation if you have your spouse sign this. You can either leave me on the mountain or try to get me back to Nepal.
"There's an idea that there's only one mountain that matters in the kind of Western, popular imagination, and that's what I wanted to show in 'Mountain'," said Peedom.
Peedom has climbed Everest herself four times, but says the thrill of summiting Everest is mostly for history books, and for true mountaineers it's just an exercise in crowd control.
She said that there seems to be a disaster mystique around Everest that serves to heighten the attraction. It is getting more and more crowded.
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