Records & People
No one publishes an official count by nationality. Here are the American deaths that can be documented since 1963, and what the record actually shows.
By Dawa Sherpa · Sep 20, 2026
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…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Trekking is not climbing Everest Base Camp at 5,364m is a trek, not a climb. Nothing on this page happened on the trekking route: the deaths above are on the mountain itself, above Base Camp, or in the 2015 earthquake. The risks on the trek are altitude…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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).
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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.
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Our coverage
We are based in Pokhara and we are following this story. Figures are provisional and we date every one of them.