Yesterday's avalanche on Everest already had been the deadliest ever, but the toll grew by one today with the discovery of a 13th Sherpa body, reports the BBC. Three more of the Nepalese guides remain missing, reports AP, and another three remain hospitalized. The avalanche struck yesterday morning as the guides were slowly hauling equipment up a narrow, perilous pass called "popcorn field" in some accounts, or "Golden Gate" and "Khumbu Icefall" in others. A member of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association tells the New York Times that the pass is so dangerous, guides generally leave before sunrise to prep the route—before the day's heat can cause ice to shift.
"Our friends started a little late,” he says. “They arrived at quarter to seven.” At another point, he sums up the sherpa-climber relationship this way: The guides do nearly all the work, while the foreign climbers get the glory. Tim Rippel, a mountaineer leading an expedition with his company Peak Freaks writes in a blog post that "there is a lot of soul searching going on right now" on Everest. “Everyone is shaken here at base camp. Some climbers are packing up and calling it quits. They want nothing to do with this." (More Mount Everest stories.)
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