Four climbers were found dead inside their tents near base camp IV on Mount Everest according to the Himalayan Times. This tragic news comes just days after a weekend in which four other climbers lost their lives on the mountain.
The Himalayan Times reports that the bodies belong to two Nepali climbers and two foreigners. Mingma Sherpa of the Seven Summits Trek group, the company the Sherpas worked for, confirmed the news to The Associated Press and Reuters on Wednesday.
Nepali sherpas said they had seen the bodies in two tents on the South Col, at 8,000 meters (26,246 feet), and a newspaper quoted the sherpas as saying that two were foreigners.
According to Reuters, officials have not been able to identify the deceased climbers because none of the climbing expeditions currently on the mountain have reported any missing members. Nepalese climbing officials believe that means the climbers may have been scaling the mountain on their own without the help of a guide service.
“It is possible that some individual climbers obtained permits and were climbing without much support due to the cost factor,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, the president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, told Reuters.
It has been suggested that the climbers might have died from operating a camp stove improperly.
“It was windy and very cold in the mountain [Tuesday],” Tshering Sherpa told Reuters. “It appears they died due to suffocation as they must have been using a stove to keep warm inside the tent.”
The latest reported fatalities on Mount Everest bring the death total for the past month on the mountain to 10.
