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Everest Expedition 2024

Nepali climbers open Everest summit for 2024 climbing season. 

Sherpa guide Kami Rita scales Mount Everest for 29th time, extending his own record again 

• A Nepali climber Kami Rita Sherpa summated Mt Everest for the 24th time this year breaking his own record. He completed the last two ascents in the same week. He made it to the summit on May 15 and on May 21st after the second weather window opens on Mt Everest. He started his second ascend this year 3 days after the first summit. Kami made his first successful ascend to Mt Everest in 1994. Earlier the record of maximum ascent was jointly held by other Nepalese mountaineers, Apa Sherpa and Phurba Tashi Sherpa. The 49 years old Sherpa guide hopes to do one more climb before retiring. 
• Irish man Seamus Sean Lawless gone missing from below the balcony area of Mt Everest while he was descending from the summit on May 15. Semus was in the eight member expedition team lead by popular Irish climber Noel Richard Hanna. He is reported to go missing after he fell from an altitude of 8,300 m below the balcony. His status is unknown and the search and rescue is underway. 
• South Africa’s Saray Khumalo became the first black African woman to summit Mt Everest on May 16 2019. Along with her were the missing Iris man and the young Indian who died at camp IV. Saray and other members have successfully made it down to the Everest base camp and are waiting to be airlifted back to Kathmandu. The rescue of Iris man and retrieval of dead climber of her team caused delay in the teams return to Kathmandu.  
• Indian climber Keval Kakka scaled Mt Everest and Lhotse in 6 days. The Mumbai based climber summated Mt Everest on May 16 and then lead a team of 9 to the summit of the 4th highest mountain in the world, Mt Lhotse (8,516m / 27940 ft). He stepped on the top of the mountain at 6:30 am on 21st May. 
• 28 years old, Indian man Ravi Thakar was found dead in his tent at Everest camp IV at 7,920 m (26,000 ft) on 16th morning. He was among the 8 member team who summated Mt Everest earlier that morning. Efforts are underway to bring his body back. 
• An American climber died below Hillary step on 22 May. 55 years old Doald Lynn Cash fell at the summit and was brought down by his guide Pas Tenji Sherpa. His guide tried to save his life by offering him their oxygin while descending. Later Pas Tenji also joined another guide to rescue an Indian climber Hitendra Chandrakant Mahajan who also fell sick at 8,300 m. 
• An AIDS - infected Nepali climber Gopal Shrestha made it to the summit on 22 May. 54 years old Shrestha from Pokhara became first of ove 30,000 HIV/AIDS infected Nepalese to sacle the highest mountain. 

The weather turned bad between the first and second weather window claiming some lives and incidences of rescue and evacuations in the Himalayas of Nepal. With the American climber's death, 12 deaths have been recorded this climbing season on several 8,000 m peaks. 3 died on Mt Kanchenjunga, 3 on Mt Makalu, 3 on Mt Everest and one each on Lhotse, Cho you and Annapurna have died so far. 

Meanwhile, search and recovery team have been deployed to Mt Everest and Makalu to trace missing climbers. The team of professional high altitude clmbers reached the balcony area to search for Irish mountaineer Sean Lawless who went missing last week. Another team of rescuers reached camp II of Mt Makalu deployed to recover the body of Indian army man Narayan Singh and to search Dipankar Ghosh who went missing from bove camp IV. 

Traffic jam on Everest causes more death

Total deaths on Nepal’s 8,000 m plus mountains reaches 20 in 2019 owing to traffic Jam on Everest. As the climbers tried to use the brief weather window to the top of Mt Everest, more climbers died making total 10 deaths on Everest in 2019. This is the worst record in the decade without natural disasters like avalanches and earthquake. 
A British climber Robin Haynes Fisher died on 25th morning at the altitude of 8,600 m while returning. Mountaineers blamed the traffic jam at ‘the death zone’ (last stretch of the climb) as the most serious challenge in the climbing season. 
According to the sources, about 122 climbers were scheduled to summit Everest on May 21, 297 on May 22 and 172 on May 23 when the second weather window opened on Everest.

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