Despite the dangers and exorbitant cost, Chinese climbing enthusiasts have joined a global craze for conquering the Earth’s highest mountain
The pinnacle of Qomolangma, the highest point on Earth at 8,848 meters up, paints a breathtaking tableau of ice and sky. Yet the icy crevices of this mountain, better known as Everest in the West, guard a chilling secret: They are the final resting place for dozens of climbers who have succumbed to its merciless altitude, from which Liu Qing narrowly escaped on May 17 this year.
“I thought I was done for,” Liu recalls to TWOC, still sporting a bruise on his arm a month after an ice sheet collapsed under him without warning as he was crossing the Khumbu Glacier, sending him and three Sherpa guides tumbling into a crevasse. Survival instinct kicked in as Liu struggled to right his body amidst the shards of ice, before a Sherpa guide pulled him up with a rope, sparing him from certain death. “The journey to the summit of Qomolangma is extremely cruel,” he says.
The “death zone” of Mount Qomolangma, defined as the sections above 8,000 meters in altitude, has claimed the lives of more than 100 climbers since 1921, accounting for about one-third of all deaths on the mountain. Thanks to an explosion in the popularity of outdoor sports, bolstered this year by the lifting of pandemic travel restrictions and by social media, Chinese climbers are increasingly part of this statistic. According to the Himalayan Database, which tracks mountain fatalities, the number of dead or missing climbers this season reached a staggering 17 as of May 2023 (including one Chinese national) making this past climbing season the deadliest in Qomolangma’s history. Since 1921, at least 13 Chinese climbers have died on the mountain.
Even after the end of the annual March-to-May climbing season this year, controversy over Qomolangma’s mountaineers remains high in China. In late May, a Chinese woman who was saved during a near-fatal incident by two other Chinese climbers and two Nepalese Sherpa guides was caught in a social media firestorm after being accused of refusing to pay 10,000 US dollars in fees to the guides who helped rescue her.
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Deadly Summit: Why Chinese Climbers Flock to the World’s Highest Peak is a story from our issue, “Small Town Saga.” To read the entire issue, become a subscriber and receive the full magazine.
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