An experienced Kenyan climber attempting to scale Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen has gone missing near the summit, compounding a series of tragic incidents on the world’s highest peak this season, according to reports first published by The Himalayan.
Cheruiyot Kirui, a banker with KCB in Kenya, lost contact with his team after reaching the Bishop Rock feature just below the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) summit on Wednesday morning, according to Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, his expedition organizer.
His Sherpa guide, Nawang, was the last to communicate with him from that precarious elevation.
“Kirui showed an abnormal behavior with his guide,” Mr. Sherpa said, quoting Nawang’s final account before the two went out of radio contact. The company has deployed two Sherpas in an attempt to locate the daring climbers.
Kirui had been attempting to join an elite group of a few hundreds of people to have summited Everest without the assistance of bottled oxygen to aid breathing in the so-called “death zone” above 8,000 meters.
As he told reporters in April: “Climbing Everest has been done before. I think the only difference is what I’m trying to do, climbing without supplemental oxygen. That has not been done by any African. It’s the tough way to climb Mt. Everest.”
The high-altitude drama is unfolding amid a deadlier-than-usual season on the mountain. Elsewhere on Everest, two climbers – Daniel Paul Peterson of the UK and Pasang Tenji Sherpa of Nepal – went missing near the Hillary Step after a route collapse on Tuesday, The Himalayan reported. And on May 13, two Mongolian mountaineers died above 8,500 meters during their descent from the peak.
Meanwhile, on the 8,516-meter Lhotse peak, a 48-year-old Romanian climber named Gabriel Tabara was found dead in his tent at Camp 3 on Tuesday after attempting that mountain without supplemental oxygen, according to the Himalayan Times. He had previously scaled Manaslu in 2021.
