Everest's Melting Ice Is Uncovering Decades of Waste and Lost Climbers — and Nepal's Army Is Bringing Them Down (2026)

Mount Everest is changing in a way that is slow, measurable and, in the most human sense, unsettling. As the climate warms, the snow that caps the world's highest mountain is thinning and the glaciers that drain its flanks are retreating. And as the ice pulls…

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What is actually melting

The retreat is not a forecast; it is a record. Studies of the Everest region cited by Wikipedia found that of 15 glaciers examined between 1976 and 2007, every one had retreated significantly, at an average of about 28 metres a year. On the mountain's Tibetan…

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Why the ice is giving up its dead

Everest has been climbed for more than seventy years, and it has never been safe. As of May 2024, records compiled on Wikipedia put the death toll on the mountain at around 340 people, and more than 200 bodies are believed to remain on Everest, never…

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The clean-up

The other thing the ice has been holding is rubbish. Everest has carried a reputation as the world's highest dump for years: hundreds of oxygen cylinders, and tonnes of tents, cans, crampons and human waste have been hauled off the mountain by clean-up teams…

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What this means for trekkers

What this means for trekkers None of this happens where you walk. Trekkers reach Everest Base Camp at about 5,364 metres; the bodies and the death-zone hazards belong to the climbing route far above, in terrain a trekker never enters. What you will see is the…

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