How many Americans have died on Everest, and why nobody can give you a real number

There is no official count of American deaths on Everest, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. The Himalayan Database, the archive that records every expedition to the Nepal Himalaya, holds nationality for the climbers in it, but the public summaries built from it report the totals that matter to mountaineers: 339 deaths against 13,737 summits through the end of 2025, or 1.06 deaths per 100 summits. Nobody publishes a running table by country. What can be done honestly is to name the American deaths that are documented, and to say plainly that the list is a floor rather than a total. Below are thirteen, from 1963 to 2021.

Why there is no American total

The record was built to track climbs, not passports. The Himalayan Database grew out of Elizabeth Hawley’s expedition records in Kathmandu and is now maintained as a research archive; the season-by-season summaries drawn from it count summits, deaths, causes and which side of the mountain, because those are the numbers that describe the risk. Nepal’s tourism department issues permits by nationality but does not publish a death breakdown, and on the Tibet side the record is thinner still.

There are also cases no tidy column would settle. Climbers hold two passports; some lived in the United States for decades without an American one; a few of the dead were never found, and what is recorded is a disappearance. That is why this piece names people instead of asserting a total.

The American deaths that can be documented

Thirteen, in order. Each is in the contemporaneous reporting of a major outlet or in the American Alpine Club’s own memorials.

One name that does not belong on it, and often appears: Alex Pancoe, the Chicago climber who died in May 2025, died at Camp 2 on Makalu, not Everest.

What the list actually shows

Most of these people died on the way down, after succeeding. That is the pattern the whole record shows, not just the American part of it: the summit is the halfway point, and exhaustion, altitude illness and a late turnaround kill more climbers than falls do on the standard routes. Across all recorded deaths, avalanche and falls account for about a quarter each, altitude illness for one in seven and exhaustion for roughly one in ten.

The other thing the list shows is that a third of these deaths had nothing to do with climbing at all. Three of the thirteen were at Base Camp in 2015, killed by an earthquake nobody could have climbed away from. One was a doctor, one a filmmaker. We wrote about that pattern in why the descent is deadlier than the climb.

Is Everest getting more dangerous?

Not by the ratio, which is the only fair measure. The mountain has never been busier: 2026 saw a record 1,008 summits from 495 permits on the Nepal side, and five deaths, which we set out name by name in our report on the 2026 season. Against 13,737 summits and 339 deaths across the whole record, the long-run rate is about one death per hundred summits, and recent seasons sit at or below it. More people die in absolute terms because far more people climb.

What this means if you are walking to Base Camp

How many people have died on Everest in total?

339 through the end of 2025, against 13,737 summits, according to the Himalayan Database. Most are on the Nepal side (229), the rest on the Tibet side (110).

How many Americans have died on Everest?

At least 13 are documented by name between 1963 and 2021. There is no official count by nationality, so the true number is higher, and nobody can say by how much.

Who was the first American to die on Everest?

Jake Breitenbach, a 27-year-old guide from Jackson, Wyoming, killed by collapsing ice in the Khumbu Icefall in March 1963, two days after the first American expedition reached Base Camp. His body emerged from the glacier seven years later.

Sources: Himalayan Database figures as published by Alan Arnette, “Everest by the Numbers: 2026 Edition” (26 January 2026); American Alpine Club memorials for Jake Breitenbach and Marty Hoey; CNN; NBC News; CBS News; ABC News; The Kathmandu Post; Explorersweb; Climbing. Where reported ages conflict, none is given.

Cover photo: Shane Kell via Pexels (Pexels License). Section photos: Tahir Xəlfəquliyev via Pexels (Pexels licence); Nico Marín via Pexels (Pexels licence); Giuseppe Paoletti via Pexels (Pexels licence); pierre matile via Pexels (Pexels licence); Julieta Camila Tosto via Pexels (Pexels licence).