Queues on Everest

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This image has been shared many times over the last few days, showing a queue of climbers attempting to reach the summit of Everest on a sunny summit opportunity. I shall talk about the image later.

There were several climbers who died as a result of this queue, and over a dozen have died in the last week or so. This has been a deadly climbing season.

 Yesterday, it was announced that a UK climber has also sadly died.

 The weather during this climbing season has been quite bad, partly as a result of a cyclone which hit India. This means that the 'good' days see hundreds of climbers trying to achieve their ambition of standing on the highest point on the planet. I've read many books over the years about the mountain, and seen many films and other media. I've followed the tweets and Facebook updates of fellow OS GetOutside Champion Kenton Cool, and Ben Fogle as they climbed Everest last year.

The Guardian has further reporting on the story.

A story from 2017 in similar vein shows that this is not a new story of course. Since the resurgence of climbs on Everest in the 1970s and 1980s there have been tragedies, often well below the Death Zone. I have used a range of resources to teach this topic.
A lot of my work has been framed by the work of Matt Podbury, who has produced an excellent set of materials on the mountain in his 8850 Unit on GeographyPods.

The image has been shared widely, often without credit. It was taken by Nirmal Purja Magar or 'Nims'
He is profiled here in National Geographic.

He has been part of Project Possible, which has been breaking records for climbing some of the most challenging peaks in the world in record time and hoping to continue during the current climbing season.


I also used a Tweet by Ben Fogle, and some of the responses to that tweet

Today in the Observer, there is an excellent piece on some further thoughts on this 

And a few Dark Tourism Twitter accounts have made a link to this area of study which I am going to explore next year with my Year 8 groups. I've got some excellent resources to use as a basis, and am going to

And to finish, another reminder of the excellence of Public Service Broadcasting.




 Update (May 27th)

Since posting, I have had a lot of responses via Twitter and likes of the suggestions about paying Nims for his images.
This NPR interview contains some more details on the death zone and how it affects people.

There has also been a response to the academics who explore Dark Tourism, an area I'm interested in developing further next year.

And Ben Fogle has written a piece on his thoughts for the Daily Mail, which I won't link to here, as I don't link to the DM, but apparently he donated his fee for the piece to Nims and the Project Possible team.

Update (May 28th)

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