Why More Than 200 Bodies Still Lie on Everest — and One Is Finally Coming Home
DNA testing has just confirmed the identity of "Green Boots," the most recognizable of the 200-plus bodies still frozen on Everest — and explains why almost none of the others will ever come home.
More than 200 bodies remain frozen into Mount Everest's upper slopes — some in plain sight of the route to the summit, one so well known that climbers have navigated by him for three decades. This month, DNA testing finally gave him back his name.
Key facts
- Between 200 and 300 bodies are estimated to remain on Everest, preserved by the cold in the "death zone" above 8,000m.
- The climber known as "Green Boots" has just been identified via DNA as Lance Naik Dorje Morup, an Indian paramilitary police climber who died in the storm of 10 May 1996 — the same disaster chronicled in Into Thin Air.
- A specialist Sherpa team is expected to attempt his recovery from the Tibetan side by October 2026, in an operation planned to run roughly 40 days.
- Recovering a single body from the death zone can cost $20,000–$200,000 and has itself killed rescuers — which is why almost none of the others will ever come down.
For most of the past thirty years, he was simply "Green Boots" — the body curled in a limestone alcove just below the Northeast Ridge's First Step, on the Chinese/Tibetan route to the summit, identifiable only by the bright turquoise mountaineering boots he never took off. Climbers on the north-side route pass within touching distance; some used him, grimly, as a distance marker — about an hour from the summit, they'd say.
For a long time, most assumed the boots belonged to Tsewang Paljor, one of three Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) officers who died descending from Everest's summit on 10 May 1996, in the storm that killed eight people across two expeditions in a single night. DNA testing carried out this year settled the question differently: the body is Morup's, a fellow member of the same six-man Indian team, who pushed on for the summit alongside Paljor and a third officer, Subedar Tsewang Smanla, while three teammates turned back. None of the three summiters made it down alive.
His family has now waited three decades for that certainty. The ITBP has announced plans to send a specialist team — reportedly around six high-altitude Sherpas — to recover Morup's remains and bring them home via Nepal, targeting completion by October 2026.
| Period | Waste removed | Bodies/remains |
|---|---|---|
| 2019–2023 (5 seasons, combined) | ~110 tonnes | — |
| 2024 (single season) | ~96 tonnes | 4 bodies + 1 skeleton |
That 2024 season alone moved nearly as much trash as the previous five years combined — a Nepali Army team of 12 soldiers and 18 support climbers spent 45 days working through the higher camps, a job climate change is quietly making both more urgent and more possible: melting ice on Everest's upper slopes is exposing bodies and gear that had been entombed for decades.
Why almost no one else comes down
Green Boots' recovery — reportedly budgeted well into six figures, even before Chinese permission is confirmed — illustrates exactly why the other 200-plus bodies stay where they fell. Above 8,000m, temperatures fall below −40°C, winds can exceed 100km/h, and a frozen body can weigh 150kg or more with accumulated ice. Moving one means a roped team working in the same oxygen-starved conditions that killed the person they're retrieving — and rescuers have died carrying out these missions before. For most families, the honest choice is between a dangerous, expensive recovery and leaving a loved one on the mountain they died climbing.
What this means for trekkers
None of this touches the standard Everest Base Camp trek from the Nepal side — Green Boots and the death zone sit thousands of metres higher, on the mountaineering route above Camp IV, nowhere near the trekking trail to Base Camp or Kala Patthar. What it does explain is the quiet respect you'll notice from every Sherpa guide once you're on the trail: this is a mountain that keeps its dead, and the people who live beneath it know exactly what that costs.
For trekkers who want to stand within sight of Everest without any of the summit-route risk, the classic 14-day Everest Base Camp trek and the quieter Gokyo Ri trek both reach well above 5,000m for sweeping views of the peak — no death zone required.
Source: CBS News, Wikipedia, The Himalayan Times
Cover photo: Museum Rotterdam via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
来源： CBS News
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