SEATTLE (AP) – All climbers on the Nepal side of Mount Everest have left the mountain and the climbing season is over following a deadly earthquake that left thousands dead in Nepal and dozens of climbers killed or injured after an avalanche swept across the basecamp staging area, according to guiding companies and individual climbers.
And teams attempting to climb the north side of Everest, the Tibet side, were called back to basecamp over the weekend and were holding discussions with Chinese officials about whether any summit attempts will be possible in the few remaining weeks of the spring climbing season, according to Adrian Ballinger, who is guiding a team for the Olympic Valley, California-based Alpenglow Expeditions.
Eric Simonson with International Mountain Guides said their team came down with others on the Nepal side who had been trapped above the Khumbu Icefall, which was impassable due to an avalanche that swept away a fixed route through that section of mountain.
“These will be the last of the climbers on the mountain,” he said in a Monday blog post.
The huge avalanche on Everest that killed 18 and injured dozens happened after Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed more than 4,000 people in the Himalayan nation.