Bring Back Your Empty Oxygen Tanks, Everest Climbers Are Urged

The Nepal Mountaineering Association has asked the climbers to help Nepal deal with a surge in COVID-19 cases that has brought the country's fragile healthcare system to breaking point, as it has in neighbouring India where deaths held close to record highs on Monday.

Nepal is so short of oxygen canisters that it has asked climbers on Mount Everest to bring back their empties instead of abandoning them on mountain slopes, an official said on Monday, as it struggles with a second wave of the coronavirus. The country issued climbing permits to more than 700 climbers for 16 Himalayan peaks - 408 to Mount Everest - for the April-May climbing season in a bid to get the mountaineering industry and tourism back up and running. The Nepal Mountaineering Association has asked the climbers to help Nepal deal with a surge in COVID-19 cases that has brought the country's fragile healthcare system to breaking point, as it has in neighbouring India where deaths held close to record highs on Monday. Kul Bahadur Gurung, a senior official with the NMA, said climbers and their Sherpa guides were estimated to have carried at least 3,500 oxygen bottles this season. These bottles often get buried in avalanches or are abandoned on the mountain slopes at the end of the expedition.