Massive ice chunk stalls Everest summit route setting

Kathmandu: A large ice chunk is blocking the climbing route to Everest’s summit, officials said Friday, risking delays in the summit season at the world’s highest peak.

A team of highly skilled mountaineers, known in Nepal as “icefall doctors”, began fixing ropes and ladders on Mount Everest last month to prepare for the coming spring climbing season.

But a dangerous serac - a block of glacial ice - above the already treacherous Khumbu icefall has disrupted their work for nearly two weeks.

“We are waiting for it to melt, and expect that it will clear in a few days,” icefall doctor Dawa Jangbu Sherpa told AFP.

Climbers must cross the Khumbu icefall, a constantly shifting maze of crevasses and ice blocks, to reach higher on Everest.

“A team of experts and highly skilled guides will head there to monitor and devise an alternative plan if needed,” said Himal Gautam, spokesman for Nepal’s tourism department.

“We are trying to ensure that there are no delays, even drop supplies by a helicopter, so that routes can be prepared on schedule,” he added.

Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 10 highest peaks and attracts hundreds of climbers each spring, when temperatures are warmer and winds calmer.

A climbing boom has made mountaineering a lucrative business since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa made the first ascent in 1953.

The government has issued more than 900 climbing permits for various Himalayan mountains this season, including 410 for Everest.

A sea of tents to host more than 1,000 people - foreign climbers and support staff - has built up at the foot of Everest, readying to scale the 8,849-metre (29,032-foot) summit.

Expedition organiser Iswori Poudel, of Himalayan Guides Nepal, said that climbers would usually be doing acclimatisation climbs on Everest at this point.

“Most teams have reached the base camp or are on their way,” he said. “Climbers are going to neighbouring peaks now for preparations.”

Around 700 people reached Everest’s summit last year from the Nepali side, according to the tourism department, with another 100 climbers believed to have reached the peak from the northern side, via China.

In 2023, three Nepali guides were killed when a falling block of glacial ice swept them into a deep crevasse as they were crossing the Khumbu icefall with supplies.

Autumn summits on Everest in 2019 were also thwarted by a serac.

In 2014, an immense tumbling wall of snow, ice and rock killed 16 Nepali guides on the icefall, one of the deadliest accidents in the Himalayas.