Greenboots has been laying there frozen in the snow since the 90s. It even became a landmark for other climbers. Im glad they managed to at least identify the poor soul. Who knows how much longer he’s going to rest there..
> The Indo-Tibetan Border Police is soliciting bids from high altitude recovery agencies for a mission to retrieve the remains of a climber long known only as "Green Boots" from the mountain's northern slope
Known simply as 'Green Boots' because of his distinctive bright green mountaineering footwear still protruding from the snow and ice, the remains have now been identified as Indian climber Dorje Morup, 47.
For decades, many mountaineers believed the body belonged to fellow Indian climber Tsewang Paljor, 28. The DNA comparison has now ended that long-running mystery.
The identification was confirmed by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) ahead of a bid to recover the body from Everest's notorious 'death zone' at an altitude of more than 8,000 metres.
Greenboots is so iconic. Other people use him as a marker. Glad he got some attention. It’s always seemed a shame that it’s impossible to give him a proper burial.
Slightly off topic, but I first heard of Green Boots in the book The Climb. I picked it up completely randomly from a used book store six states away from home and wow what a find! It is a riveting story start to finish and I recommend it to everyone who is looking for a great read. My partner got her hyper fixation on high altitude mountaineering from it despite having no interest in ever actually climbing a mountain herself from reading it.
If you haven’t yet I highly recommend checking it out.
I've only read Into Thin Air, but that book makes Boukreev (author of The Climb) seem like an unreliable narrator. I have zero interest in high altitude mountaineering (I prefer lower altitude rock climbing) but I should probably check out The Climb to get both sides.
I thought the Guardian might decide not to show a photo of a corpse of someone probably with living friends and close relatives.
Nope, they do it too, like the Daily Mail, but with a big yellow GUI control to reveal it, like a weird macabre vintage "multimedia".
> Use the slider below to show a picture of the body of the climber known as Green Boots where it lies on Mount Everest. Some readers may find the image distressing
Just because the photo has been shown before doesn't mean it needs to be shown now, especially now that it's been identified, in in this context.
The problem is that AFP, AP and Reuters supply the news to these big outlets and have done for decades. Sometimes this comes out in different papers using the same phrasing.
It means that our news is filtered through a handful of outlets, and is dependent on their own policies.
I can’t imagine having a hobby that involves passing by, and in some cases climbing over, the exposed remains of others who died doing that same activity.
A good friend of mine is a professional alpinist who focuses only climbing eight-thousanders with no supplementary oxygen. Through him I’ve met others and learned about this whole community. A number of people are as weird and eccentric as us here in computer-nerd circles; one is tempted to armchair-diagnose some as autistic and climbing as their fixation, so something like Green Boots or the death of peers just won’t stop them. (I envy them that their fixation gives them the physique of a Greek god and stories that can impress any listener, so they often manage to be very socially successful in spite of their quirks.)
A climber who was pivotally involved in the failed rescue efforts for the dead person in this article immediately left on a solo climb of a nearby mountain. He died just over a year later in another climbing incident.
For passing by, that says some about the danger of the hobby and much more about the effort of getting the body back. There's lots of common activities where you might pass by a spot someone died while doing it. Notably, driving a car nearly guarantees it.
The stepping over the dead bothers me little, frankly. As a mountaineer, it's hard to imagine a nicer end than dying at the top of a beautiful mountain. Beats the care home for sure.
What horrifies me is the idea of stepping past people who are alive and dying, because... Meh? Because I paid to go the top, not rescue stragglers? People often say they can barely walk forwards, never mind rescue someone, and it's true. But surely if you have any energy left in you, it should go to saving a life. And if it is so touch and go for you, then don't go.
Back in the 90s, I went to see an IMAX film about climbing Everest and at the beginning, I was thinking, “I could do this,” but as it continued my view turned into, “I will never do this. This is insane.”
What’s really scary now is that it’s turned into something where people have to literally stand in line to reach the summit.
As a firefighter/EMT I occasionally have to deal with death, and I will even put myself in somewhat dangerous situations (that I've been trained for, and for which I have appropriate PPE) if there's a chance I can save a life.
But putting myself in a situation where the likelihood of dying is quite high for no reason other than to say I did it? No thanks.
Nevertheless I'm glad the family of Mr. Morup is no longer wondering what happened to him.
Especially after viewing those sad photos of crowded Disneyesque queues that look like Instagram Influencers lining up in a flash crowd outside of a suddenly popular café in Amsterdam to photograph stroopwafels, climbing Mount Everest like an orographic theme-park ride seems like such a self-indulgent, narcissistic, attention-starved, over-entitled, high-cost, societally unhelpful, environmentally abusive, privileged pastime for bored rich kids with nothing better to do than leave frozen turds and dead sherpas behind as territorial status markers, fake imaginary bone spurs to defraud insurance companies into conveniently flying them down in helicopters after they've snapped their selfies, pin on another mass-produced badge of exceptionalism, then check off another performative achievement of conspicuous consumption on their luxury failson bucket lists.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to send them all to queue up and gawk at the Titanic in a deep-sea Disneyland Autopia traffic jam of carelessly built, overpriced, high-tech, clown-car CyberSubs?
Well, rest in peace. If they do remove him, I hope nobody else loses their lives in the process. I understand they often don't bring people down because of the difficulty and danger of carrying something has heavy as a person at that altitude.
"Rainbow Valley" is a region near the top with many bodies, so-called because of the variety of coats and other gear. Most photos on Google are AI-generated, though.
Let us pay tribute to the courage of our Tibetan friends.
"The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is a central armed police force in India, under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is responsible for guarding India's border with Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It was formed in the aftermath of the Sino-Indian War of 1962"
Serious question. When climbers are walking by bodies, do they check if they are still alive or need help? Is there nothing that could be done anyways? Face down means don’t bother checking?
Any human not moving in Rainbow Valley is presumed dead?
I imagine you’re trying to keep yourself alive and keep your eyes forward, and realize you can’t do anything to help them anyways.
There was a case of a climber (David Sharp) that was having issues and found shelter in the vicinity of green boots, and the theory was that part of why he died is that the 40 climbers who passed by him without stopping just assumed he was green boots and didn't pay attention.
What exactly is dangerous about this climb? What kills people specifically?
I hear people talk about the weather, visibility, injuries, etc etc. But all of those, if you stay put they're not problems, right? The only real problem I can think of is temperatures so low that your equipment can't contain heat loss for long enough and your body will shut down.
Ok temperature. So if this is the only danger (that can't be addressed by staying put) then could it be addressed by thicker clothes and/or electrically heated clothes?
> What exactly is dangerous about this climb? What kills people specifically?
Lack of oxygen, mostly. Bad in itself, but if the temperatures drop to dangerous lows, you're less likely to notice because you're out also of your head due to hypoxia/hypercapnia.
Article mentions helicopters can't (or safely) fly there due to thin air at altitude.
Sounds logical for existing helicopters designed to operate at lower altitude.
But wouldn't it be possible to design or adapt a helicopter specifically for this purpose?
It's not that aerodynamics / lift etc suddenly stop working, it's 'just' the numbers changing. Eg. a helicopter with longer rotor blades, or dual-rotor design might work? Bonus points if it could fly unmanned to not risk pilots' lives unnecessarily.
During the ~1 week of the year where it's safest to summit, they're typically looking at 15kph winds with up to 50kph gusts. Conditions are worse for the rest of the year. It's unsafe to try to hover near the ground in those conditions, and the thinner atmosphere just compounds that problem.
Also, you're talking about designing a new, specialized helicopter... that's not cheap, and someone would have to pay for it. What's the commercial incentive?
47 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 15.6 ms ] thread> The Indo-Tibetan Border Police is soliciting bids from high altitude recovery agencies for a mission to retrieve the remains of a climber long known only as "Green Boots" from the mountain's northern slope
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mount-everest-green-boots-body-...
Known simply as 'Green Boots' because of his distinctive bright green mountaineering footwear still protruding from the snow and ice, the remains have now been identified as Indian climber Dorje Morup, 47.
For decades, many mountaineers believed the body belonged to fellow Indian climber Tsewang Paljor, 28. The DNA comparison has now ended that long-running mystery.
The identification was confirmed by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) ahead of a bid to recover the body from Everest's notorious 'death zone' at an altitude of more than 8,000 metres.
If you haven’t yet I highly recommend checking it out.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/22/mt-everest-gre...
Nope, they do it too, like the Daily Mail, but with a big yellow GUI control to reveal it, like a weird macabre vintage "multimedia".
> Use the slider below to show a picture of the body of the climber known as Green Boots where it lies on Mount Everest. Some readers may find the image distressing
Just because the photo has been shown before doesn't mean it needs to be shown now, especially now that it's been identified, in in this context.
The irony of this though is that you just become bucketed in another consumer group.
Resist the packaging of yourself by media firms and marketing.
Try and consume news through the sources like AFP or Reuters (unfortunately not free anymore)
It means that our news is filtered through a handful of outlets, and is dependent on their own policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Boukreev
For passing by, that says some about the danger of the hobby and much more about the effort of getting the body back. There's lots of common activities where you might pass by a spot someone died while doing it. Notably, driving a car nearly guarantees it.
What horrifies me is the idea of stepping past people who are alive and dying, because... Meh? Because I paid to go the top, not rescue stragglers? People often say they can barely walk forwards, never mind rescue someone, and it's true. But surely if you have any energy left in you, it should go to saving a life. And if it is so touch and go for you, then don't go.
https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-porter-death-k2-norwegia...
What’s really scary now is that it’s turned into something where people have to literally stand in line to reach the summit.
But putting myself in a situation where the likelihood of dying is quite high for no reason other than to say I did it? No thanks.
Nevertheless I'm glad the family of Mr. Morup is no longer wondering what happened to him.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to send them all to queue up and gawk at the Titanic in a deep-sea Disneyland Autopia traffic jam of carelessly built, overpriced, high-tech, clown-car CyberSubs?
"Rainbow Valley" is a region near the top with many bodies, so-called because of the variety of coats and other gear. Most photos on Google are AI-generated, though.
Let us pay tribute to the courage of our Tibetan friends.
"The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is a central armed police force in India, under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is responsible for guarding India's border with Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It was formed in the aftermath of the Sino-Indian War of 1962"
Any human not moving in Rainbow Valley is presumed dead?
I imagine you’re trying to keep yourself alive and keep your eyes forward, and realize you can’t do anything to help them anyways.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/david-sharp
It's why green boots was moved (and is no longer a landmark), and David Sharp was also moved.
I hear people talk about the weather, visibility, injuries, etc etc. But all of those, if you stay put they're not problems, right? The only real problem I can think of is temperatures so low that your equipment can't contain heat loss for long enough and your body will shut down.
Ok temperature. So if this is the only danger (that can't be addressed by staying put) then could it be addressed by thicker clothes and/or electrically heated clothes?
Not trolling, real question.
Lack of oxygen, mostly. Bad in itself, but if the temperatures drop to dangerous lows, you're less likely to notice because you're out also of your head due to hypoxia/hypercapnia.
Sounds logical for existing helicopters designed to operate at lower altitude.
But wouldn't it be possible to design or adapt a helicopter specifically for this purpose?
It's not that aerodynamics / lift etc suddenly stop working, it's 'just' the numbers changing. Eg. a helicopter with longer rotor blades, or dual-rotor design might work? Bonus points if it could fly unmanned to not risk pilots' lives unnecessarily.
During the ~1 week of the year where it's safest to summit, they're typically looking at 15kph winds with up to 50kph gusts. Conditions are worse for the rest of the year. It's unsafe to try to hover near the ground in those conditions, and the thinner atmosphere just compounds that problem.
Also, you're talking about designing a new, specialized helicopter... that's not cheap, and someone would have to pay for it. What's the commercial incentive?