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More than 300 people have died climbing Everest. A retired Sherpa returns to the mountain to bring home a body 2%
By CBC Docs0%
5/1/2026, 4:08:32 PM
Topics: Documentaries, Mount Everest
BS Summary: This article contains 6 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Halo Effect, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 5.2% saturation with 28 hits. Analysis detected 113 faulty-reasoning hits from 540 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 10.9% and a BS Rank of 2% (16,562 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 98.50% of the article peer group.
Mount Everest has become the highest graveyard on Earth.
Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first summited Everest in 1953, more than 7,000 people have reached the peak.
But over 300 climbers have died on the mountain — and 132 were working Sherpas.
To this day, around 200 bodies remain on the mountain, frozen in ice and snow.
In the documentary Everest Dark, famed climber Mingma Tsiri Sherpa visits Everest one last time to bring home a body, hoping to appease the mountain gods.
He believes they are angry because Everest has been desecrated by garbage, commercialization and the abandonment of the dead.
Revered in Nepal as a national hero, Mingma stands among the best high-altitude climbers of all time.
Born in the remote village of Beding in the Rolwaling Valley, Mingma was one of nine children in a family struggling with poverty.
He found spiritual nourishment in the towering peaks surrounding his home — especially Chomolungma, as Sherpas call Everest, a sacred home to the mountain gods.
Mingma’s fascination with mountaineering began with his father, Nima Tsiri Sherpa, who worked as a mail runner for Hillary and Norgay when they made their first successful summit of Everest.
Under his father’s mentorship, Mingma began learning the ways of the Himalayas.
On an early trek, he looked into a crevasse and saw the body of a dead porter.
The experience profoundly changed him, forging a deep respect for the power of the mountain — and its gods.
Climbers on the Khumbu Icefall.
On April 18, 2014, a giant serac on the glacier collapsed, killing 16 Sherpas.
Only 13 bodies were found and returned to their families.
Mingma hopes to find one of the missing men and bring the body home.
Over the years, Mingma rose from porter to elite rescue specialist, eventually summiting Everest 19 times.
Alongside his six brothers, he set a Guinness World Record for the most aggregate ascents of Everest by siblings.
He also became one of the first Nepalese climbers to summit K2, the world’s second-highest peak.
But he paid a price, witnessing many deaths and surviving countless close calls on his trips.
After a 2015 earthquake killed at least 19 people at Everest Base Camp and about 9,000 others across Nepal, Mingma had a haunting dream.
God warned him that if he ever attempted to climb Everest again, he would die there.
Deeply shaken, Mingma swore off climbing forever.
WATCH | Mingma Tsiri Serpa explains the dream that made him stop climbing:
But when 11 more climbers perished in traffic jams high on the mountain in 2019, something shifted.
Against the warnings of his dream and the fears of his wife, Chhiring, Mingma made a fateful decision.
He assembled a team of elite climbers, including his brother Pasang, to join him on one of his most dangerous missions yet: to return to Everest one last time, not to break records, but to retrieve a body and restore peace to the sacred mountain.
A long line of climbers near the top of Everest.
Watch Everest Dark on CBC Gem.
Coming soon to the CBC Docs YouTube channel.
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