10 Mountain Climbing Disasters Deadlier Than The Everest Movie

The Mountain: Mount Pisang, a 6,089-meter (19,977-foot) trekking peak once considered to be among the easier paths on the Annapurna circuit in Nepal

# of Deaths: 11

The Story: Klaus Kolb owes his life to altitude sickness. Without it, he would have surely followed the rest of his expedition on their ill-fated summit climb. Instead, he stayed behind at high camp and watched as his ten fellow alpinists, led by a 25-year-old German Army officer who was the head of the alpine commando unit, and their Sherpa guide disappeared into a “cloud of blowing snow.” Their corpses were eventually found huddled together on a snowfield. The dead included nine Germans, one Swiss and the Sherpa guide, the worst mountaineering accident in the Himalaya’s since Manaslu in 1972. At the memorial service, the former president of the German Alpine Federation solemnly observed, “On the mountain, joy and sorrow are close companions. Fate decreed this time that the outcome would be sorrow."

The guides who recovered the bodies determined the accident happened after the climbers had reached the summit together. During their descent, they were roped together in groups of three or four. When some of the members slid on a icy slope it caused a domino effect dragging them 472 meters (1,500 feet) down the slope and then a straight 152 meter (500 ft.) drop.

The accident ignited a debate as to whether or not the Nepalese government needed to place more restrictions on foreign climbers. A Sherpa named Pertemba told The New York Times, “There are too many rich people who want to come to the Himalayas, climb a high mountain, and spend the rest of their lives talking about it. If everything is perfect, they succeed. If not, they fail, and the result is disaster."