Icefall Doctors back to Everest

Feb 28, 2016- Icefall doctors are back to business on the world’s highest mountain.

A team of 10 icefall doctors has left for the base camp from Namche, according to Kapindra Rai, programme officer at the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC).

The specialist team will fix the route between Everest’s Base Camp, across the notorious Khumbu icefall, to Camp 2 at, which was swept away in a deadly avalanche triggered by the massive earthquake in April last year. The Khumbu region is a steep section of a glacier shaped like a frozen waterfall and is one of the most dangerous portions of a route, which is followed by a majority of mountaineers, to ascend the 8,848-metre peak.
Icefall doctors build bridges using aluminum ladders to cross deep crevasses and set ropes for mountaineers to clip their harnesses into over dangerous sections. Mountaineering expedition on the highest mountain in the world, locally known as Sagarmatha, has been disrupted for two consecutive years due to adverse weather conditions. In 2014, at least 16 people trying to fix the route died by an avalanche that swept the glacier.

In April and May last year, at least 18 persons had died at the base camp in an avalanche caused by earthquakes.

News source: The Kathmandu Post