Nas encostas sagradas do Everest, as alterações climáticas estão a reduzir a neve e o gelo, expondo cada vez mais corpos de alpinistas que morreram na tentativa de alcançar o cume da montanha mais alta do mundo. Uma equipa tem a difícil e dolorosa missão de resgatar os restos mortais das vítimas que pereceram ao tentar escalar o Mont Everest.
Desde 1920, mais de 300 alpinistas ficaram para sempre no Mont Everest. Só este ano, já morreram oito.
O último, foi em 28 Maio deste ano. Um alpinista indiano morreu apesar de ter sido resgatado. Banshi Lai, indiano de 46 anos, foi retirado do cume do Everest uma semana antes, mas "morreu no hospital" em Katmandu," disse à AFP Rakesh Gurung, do Departamento de Turismo do Nepal.
O Departamento de Turismo do Nepal anunciou na semana anterior, a morte de outros dois alpinistas, um queniano e um nepalês, também no Everest, a 8.849 metros de altitude.
Na semana anterior, dois montanhistas mongóis, desaparecidos após chegarem ao cume, também foram encontrados mortos.
Mais de 600 montanhistas, estrangeiros e nepaleses, chegaram ao cume do Everest desde Abril.
Todas as mortes relatadas ocorreram a mais de 8.000 metros acima do nível do mar, na chamada 'zona da morte', onde a falta de oxigénio aumenta o risco de o 'mal de altitude' e hipoxemia.
Entre os que escalam o pico mais elevado do Himalaia, este ano, está uma equipa singular, cujo objectivo não é chegar ao cume de 8.849 metros, mas sim, descer restos mortais dos que lá ficaram.
Arriscando a vida, já recuperaram cinco corpos congelados, incluindo um esqueleto, que depois levaram para Katmandu, capital do Nepal. Dois corpos já pré-identificados aguardam "testes detalhados" para confirmar as suas identidades, disse Rakesh Gurung, do Ministério do Turismo do Nepal. Alguns serão cremados.
A missão de limpar o Everest e os picos vizinhos do Lhotse e do Nuptse é difícil, perigosa e macabra.
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Montanhistas em fila descendo o Monte Everest, no Nepal
credit: Lakpa SHERPA / AFP
"Devido aos efeitos das mudanças climáticas, os corpos e os resíduos tornam-se mais visíveis à medida que a camada de neve diminui", disse à AFP Aditya Karki, comandante do Exército nepalês que lidera uma equipa de 12 soldados e 18 montanhistas.
Mais de 300 pessoas morreram no Everest desde o início das expedições na década de 1920, oito delas nesta última temporada. Muitos corpos ficaram no local, alguns escondidos pela neve ou em fendas profundas.
Outros ainda são visíveis com os seus equipamentos de escalada e tornaram-se pontos de referência para os montanhistas que lhes deram apelidos como "Botas Verdes" ou "Bela Adormecida".
🙏RIP todos os alpinistas que tiveram o sonho de escalar o Mont Everest e cairam.
Everest's sacred slopes, climate change is thinning snow and ice, increasingly exposing the bodies of hundreds of mountaineers who died chasing their dream to summit the world's highest mountain.
Among those scaling the soaring Himalayan mountain this year was a team not aiming for the 8,849-metre (29,032-foot) peak, but risking their own lives to bring some of the corpses down.
Five as yet unnamed frozen bodies were retrieved -- including one that was just skeletal remains -- as part of Nepal's mountain clean-up campaign on Everest and adjoining peaks Lhotse and Nuptse.
It is a grim, tough and dangerous task.
Rescuers took hours to chip away the ice with axes, with the team sometimes using boiling water to release its frozen grip.
"Because of the effects of global warming, (the bodies and trash) are becoming more visible as the snow cover thins," said Aditya Karki, a major in Nepal's army, who led the team of 12 military personnel and 18 climbers.
More than 300 people have perished on the mountain since expeditions started in the 1920s, eight this season alone.
Many bodies remain. Some are hidden by snow or swallowed down deep crevasses.
Others, still in their colourful climbing gear, have become landmarks en route to the summit.
Nicknames include "Green Boots" and "Sleeping Beauty".
- 'Death zone' -
"There is a psychological effect," Karki told AFP.
"People believe that they are entering a divine space when they climb mountains, but if they see dead bodies on the way up, it can have a negative effect."
Many are inside the "death zone", where thin air and low oxygen levels raise the risk of altitude sickness.
Climbers must have insurance, but any rescue or recovery mission is fraught with danger.
One body, encased in ice up to its torso, took the climbers 11 hours to free.
The team had to use hot water to loosen it, prising it out with their axes.
"It is extremely difficult," said Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa, who led the body retrieval expedition.
"Getting the body out is one part, bringing it down is another challenge".
Sherpa said some of the bodies still appeared almost as they had at the moment of death -- dressed in full gear, along with their crampons and harnesses.
One seemed untouched, only missing a glove.
The retrieval of corpses at high altitudes is a controversial topic for the climbing community.
It costs thousands of dollars, and up to eight rescuers are needed for each body.
A body can weigh over 100 kilogrammes (220 pounds), and at high altitudes, a person's ability to carry heavy loads is severely affected.
- 'Turn into a graveyard' -
But Karki said the rescue effort was necessary.
"We have to bring them back as much as possible," he said. "If we keep leaving them behind, our mountains will turn into a graveyard."
Bodies are often wrapped in a bag then put on a plastic sled to drag down.
Sherpa said that bringing one body down from close to Lhotse's 8,516 metre peak -- the world's fourth-highest mountain -- had been among the hardest challenges so far.
"The body was frozen with hands and legs spread," he said.
"We had to carry it down to Camp Three as it was, and only then could it be moved to be put in a sled to be dragged."
Rakesh Gurung, from Nepal's tourism department, said two bodies had been preliminarily identified and authorities were awaiting "detailed tests" for the final confirmation.
The retrieved bodies are now in the capital Kathmandu, with those not identified likely to be eventually cremated.
- Missing mountaineers -
Despite the recovery efforts, the mountain still holds its secrets.
The body of George Mallory, the British climber who went missing during a 1924 attempt on the summit, was only found in 1999.
His climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, has never been found - nor has their camera, which could provide evidence of a successful summit that would rewrite mountaineering history.
The clean-up campaign, with a budget of over $600,000, also employed 171 Nepali guides and porters to bring back 11 tonnes of rubbish.
Fluorescent tents, discarded climbing equipment, empty gas canisters and even human excreta litter the well-trodden route to the summit.
"The mountains have given us mountaineers so many opportunities," Sherpa said.
"I feel that we have to give back to them, we have to remove the trash and bodies to clean the mountains."
Today, expeditions are under pressure to remove the waste that they create, but historic rubbish remains.
"This year's trash might be brought back by the mountaineers," said Karki. "But who will bring the old ones?"
🙏RIP all climbers who had the dream to climb the Mount Everest and died for them
Geração 'polar'
27-06.2024
Sources: Sapo/ Yahoo News / CBS News
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