KATHMANDU, Jul 13 (NNN-XINHUA) – A total of 457 mountaineers, including Sherpa guides, scaled the world’s tallest Mt. Qomolangma, from the Nepali side, during the 2021 spring season of mountaineering, Nepal’s Department of Tourism said yesterday.
The feat was achieved despite reports about climbers infected with COVID-19 and reduced weather windows, due to snowfall and winds in the Himalayas, caused by two back-to-back cyclones, TaukTae and Yaas, which originated from the east-central Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, respectively.
“After taking briefings from leaders of the expedition teams, we confirmed the number of climbers who reached the top of Mt. Qomolangma, during this year’s spring season,” Bhisma Raj Bhattarai, a section officer, at the mountaineering section of the Tourism Department, told Xinhua.
The department usually confirms the exact number of climbers scaling the Nepal-based mountains, after taking briefings from expedition leaders.
According to the department, a total of 182 mountaineers climbed Mt. Qomolangma this spring, while 275 climbing guides also reached the top of the 8,848.86-metre-high peak that straddles Nepal and China.
A total of 408 climbers took climbing permits from the Nepali agency, a record high for the spring season.
“More climbers could have scaled Mt. Qomolangma, had the weather conditions remained friendly,” said Bhattarai. He added, the COVID-19 had hardly made any impact on the mountaineering activities, despite reports about climbers being infected with it.
Nepal’s Tourism Department rejects reports about a large number of mountaineers infected with the virus. “Nobody notified us, formally, about the COVID-19 infections,” said Bhattarai.
“It is true that a few climbers were infected with the virus, but some climbers, who were tested positive, again scaled Mt. Qomolangma after recovering from the illness,” Mingma Sherpa, chairman of Seven Summit Treks, a leading expedition company in Nepal, said.
In 2019, 644 mountaineers, including 280 foreign nationals, managed to step on top of Mt. Qomolangma, while Nepal banned climbing in 2020, over the COVID-19 pandemic.
This spring, a total of 633 climbers and their supporting staff scaled six Himalayan mountains, including Mt. Qomolangma, although the Nepali authorities had issued climbing permits for 16 mountains inside Nepal, according to the Tourism Department.
“This is due to bad weather,” said Sherpa. “We had clients for Mt. Dhaulagiri and Mt. Makalu, but they had to return empty-handed, due to bad weather.”– NNN-XINHUA
