NEW DELHI, Aug 28:
The success rate of summiting Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak, has doubled in the last three decades, while the death rate for climbers has hovered unchanged at around 1 per cent since 1990, according to a study.
Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, Davis, in the US also found that the number of climbers on Mount Everest has greatly increased, crowding the narrow route through the dangerous “death zone” near the summit. The findings, published on Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, analysed the success and death rates for all first-time climbers who had a permit to summit Everest during the period of 2006 to 2019.
The study shows that the summit success rates from the 1990 to 2019 have essentially doubled; two-thirds of climbers now reach the summit, verses one-third previously.
The researchers found that the overall death rate of around one per cent hasn’t changed.
They also found that a contemporary 60-year-old climber has the same success rate — about 40 per cent — as a 40-year-old climber in the prior period, suggesting “60 is the new 40” when it comes to summiting the Everest. A contemporary 60-year-old climber has the about the same death rate — about 2 per cent as a 48.5-year-old in the earlier period, according to the researchers.
They also found that more women are attempting the climb in recent years (14.6 per cent) versus the previous period (9.1 per cent), with women and men having very similar odds of success or death in both periods.
The doubling of the summit success rate is likely due to a number of factors.
Weather forecasting has dramatically improved since the “Into Thin Air” storm of 1996, giving climbers more information on the best window to push for the summit, according to the researchers.
Some climbers are using elevated flow rates of supplemental oxygen — and doing so lower on the mountain, they said.
The most popular routes have fixed lines, meaning climbers can clip into ropes tethered to the mountain for their ascent and descent, making it safer if they fall, the researchers noted.
Increased experience of expedition leaders and high-altitude porters may also have helped boost success rates, according to the resaerchers.
Interestingly, while more climbers are making it to the top in recent years, today’s climbers are actually less experienced in climbing tall peaks in Nepal than climbers who attempted Everest in the 1990s and early 2000s, they said.
Mount Everest draws over 500 climbers each spring to attempt the summit during a small window of favourable conditions on the rugged Himalayan mountain that tops out at just over 29,000 feet. (PTI)
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