MOUNT EVEREST BASE CAMP — A large unstable ice block on the route just above Mount Everest base camp has forced hundreds of climbers and local guides to delay their attempt to scale the world's highest peak. Officials were working with climbers and expedition organizers to assess the situation.
The serac, located between base camp and camp one, is part of the Khumbu icefall. "The serac between base camp and camp one was unstable and risky for climbers," Himal Gautam said.
The Sagarmatha pollution control committee, which deploys teams to lay the route each year, planned to assess the serac by aerial survey. "The risk of avalanche was high," Lama Kazi Sherpa said, adding that the committee was waiting for the serac to melt down to a safe level.
Icefall doctors, the elite guides who lay the yearly climbing route by setting ropes and securing aluminum ladders over crevasses, usually finish their work by mid-April. The Khumbu icefall is a constantly shifting glacier with deep crevasses and huge overhanging ice that can be as big as 10-story buildings, requiring climbers to navigate technical crevasses and overhanging ice.
Nepal has issued permits to 410 foreign climbers to attempt to reach the Everest summit during the spring climbing season, which closes at the end of May. Hundreds of foreign climbers and about the same number of Nepalese guides and helpers are expected to attempt to scale the mountain next month, when there are a few brief windows of favorable weather.
In 2014, a chunk of the glacier sheared away from the mountain, causing an avalanche of ice that killed 16 Sherpa guides as they carried clients' equipment up the mountain. That event was one of the deadliest disasters in Everest climbing history.
The summit of the 8,849-meter peak was first reached on 29 May 1953 by Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary. Thousands of people have reached the summit since.