Deadly Avalanche on Everest Kills 12

Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) -- A high-altitude avalanche Friday killed 12 Sherpa guides and seriously wounded three in the single deadliest accident on Mount Everest, officials said.

Four others are missing, said Madhu Sudan Burlakoti of Nepal's Tourism Ministry, adding that six people were injured in total.
A group of about 50 people, mostly Nepali Sherpas, were hit by the avalanche at more than 20,000 feet, said Tilak Ram Pandey of the ministry's mountaineering department.

The avalanche took place just above base camp in the Khumbu Ice Fall.

The climbers were accounted for, Pandey said. "Rescue teams have gone ... to look for the missing."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/18/world/asia/nepal-everest-avalanche/

Very sad. The increased climbing traffic on Everest in recent years has led to a lot of problems on the mountain with leftover garbage and Disney-like crowds. I think Nepal is trying to reform some of the protocols for climbers, but Everest was clearly not, uh, "designed" to deal with so many people.

All returning climbers must carry out 18 pounds of garbage

Very sad but all-too-frequent tragedy. All the dead were Sherpa porters and climbers. Many Sherpa people put their lives on the line for affluent westerners climbing Everest so they can check one more adventure off the bucket list.

Here is another perspective on the avalanche:
http://www.adventure-journal.com/2014/04/avalanche-on-mt-everest-kills-12-three-still-missing/

Adventure-Journal.com wrote

As Outside reported in a story called The Disposable Man: A Western History of Sherpas on Everest, “It’s a lucrative way of life in a poor region, but no service industry in the world so frequently kills and maims its workers for the benefit of paying clients.

“A Sherpa working above Base Camp on Everest is nearly ten times more likely to die than a commercial fisherman—the profession the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rates as the most dangerous nonmilitary job in the U.S.—and more than three and a half times as likely to perish than an infantryman during the first four years of the Iraq war.”

Saw this on the news this AM. What I loved was the comment by one climber who said that this could be the end of the climbing season. The reason of course was because they lost all the people to carry their shit up the mountain. You could tell where his priorities were.

I've been on glaciers a few times back in the day, but never anything like that.  No desire to go to Everest.  Wondering if the crowding and litter would go down if the climbers had to mule their own stuff up to high camp.

This story continues. A very interesting article by Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air, Into the Wild...) appeared in the New York Times. The Sherpas are organizing:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/04/everest-sherpas-death-and-anger.html