Kathmandu - On Everest's sacred slopes, climate change is thinning snow and ice, increasingly exposing the bodies of hundreds of mountaineers who died chasing their dream to summit the world's highest mountain . Among those scaling the soaring Himalayan mountain this year was a team not aiming for the 29,032-foot peak, but risking their own lives to bring some of the corpses down. Five as yet unnamed frozen bodies were retrieved — including one that was just skeletal remains — as part of Nepal's mountain clean-up campaign on Everest and adjoining peaks Lhotse and Nuptse.
It is a grim, tough and dangerous task. Rescuers took hours to chip away the ice with axes, with the team sometimes using boiling water to release its frozen grip. "Because of the effects of global warming, (the bodies and trash) are becoming more visible as the snow cover thins," said Aditya Karki, a major in Nepal's army who led the team of 12 military personnel and 18 climbers.
A picture taken on May 16, 2010 shows the body of a mountaineer being retrieved by unseen Nepalese Sherpas during a Mount Everest clean-up expedition. NAMGYAL SHERPA/AFP/Getty More than 300 people have perished on the mountain since expeditions started in the 1920s, eight this season alone. Many bodies remain.
Some are hidden by snow or swallowed down deep crevasses. Others, still in their colourful climbing gear, have become landmarks en route to the summit. Nicknames include "Green Boots" and "Sleeping Beauty.
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