Cheruiyot Kirui’s body removal from Mount Everest might cost Kshs9,000,000 or more. In 1984, two Nepalese hikers passed on, and retrieving their bodies took a significant amount of time and expense. Retrieving bodies from Mt. Everest is a dangerous, expensive, and torturous endeavour.
Final repatriation costs can reach tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes around $70,000 (approximately Sh9 million), and can come with a fatal price in itself.
That is why more than 200 bodies lie on Mount Everest. The bodies are intact due to the extreme cold temperatures; therefore, they can’t decompose.
Most families that have lost their loved ones to Mt. Everest have held memorial services at home and left their kin to rest on the mountain. This is a tragedy that nearly all affected families can’t forget. It is very, very scary.
In mountaineering, the death zone refers to altitudes above a certain point where the pressure of oxygen is insufficient to sustain human life for an extended period of time. The general designation for this point is 8,000 m (26,000 ft), where the atmospheric pressure falls below 356 millibars.
Mr. Cheruiyot is not an average hiker but a professional. He has successfully scaled the 8165-meter Mansla Mountain in India. If only he had succeeded, he could have become the first African to climb Mount Everest without the need for supplemental oxygen.
The key question now is whether they will be able to recover his body. He took a risk, and he knew what could happen. Regrettably, he found himself in an area where retrieving bodies is extremely challenging. Who’s willing to risk their own life to get a dead body and possibly die themselves?