Who Died First on Mount Everest ? The Complete History of the Mountain’s First Fatalities

The first recorded death on Mount Everest occurred on June 7, 1922, on this sad day seven Sherpa porters lost lives in an avalanche on the North Col during the British Everest Expedition. The avalanche struck during a descent from a high camp attempt led by George Mallory. These seven Sherpa deaths are the first confirmed fatalities in climbing of Everest in history. The first Western mountaineers to die on Everest were George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who disappeared on June 8, 1924, during a summit attempt. Their fate remained unknown for 75 years until George Mallory‘s body was discovered in 1999. However, despite these attempts, it is unknown whether Mallory and the sherpas were the first to die in the summit as official record keeping was not fully developed during the period.

Early Attempts to Climb Mount Everest in the 1920s

As quoted earlier, for most of recorded history Mount Everest was simply unknown to the Western world. Tibetan and Nepali communities who lived in the shadow of the great peaks had no interest in climbing them, viewing the summits as sacred and unapproachable. It was not until the British Great Trigonometrical Survey of India formally identified Everest as the world’s highest peak in 1856 that the mountain became an objective for European mountaineers. The first serious British expedition arrived at the mountain in 1921, tasked with mapping the peak and identifying possible routes to the summit. That reconnaissance team included George Mallory, already regarded as one of Britain’s finest climbers.

The 1922 British Everest Expedition returned with a full summit attempt. The team reached a height of approximately 8,225 meters on the North Ridge, the highest any human had ever climbed during that point in the history of mountaineering. However, during this uneventful expedition, the mountain extracted its first terrible price and showed the dangers of climbing mountains. The equipment during this era was very primitive by modern standards. The climbers wore heavy wool and gabardine clothing which provided limited insulation from the Himalayan cold climate. The oxygen systems were very basic, heavy, and unreliable. The weather forecast was limited to reading a barometer and analyzing the sky condition. There were no fixed ropes, no modern harnesses, and no satellite communication of any kind.

Was George Mallory the First Person to Die on Everest?

George Mallory is the most famous of Everest’s early casualties, but he was not the first to die on the mountain. Seven Sherpa porters perished on the North Col in the 1922 avalanche before Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared two years later. George Mallory was a British school teacher and a celebrated mountaineer who had participated in all three British Everest expeditions of the 1920s. He is famously reported to have answered the question of why he wanted to climb Everest with the words “Because it is there”, a phrase that has become one of the most quoted lines in adventure history.

In the 1924 British Everest Expedition, George Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine set out for the summit on June 8, 1924, from a high camp at approximately 8,170 metres. They were last seen alive by expedition geologist Noel Odell, who spotted them through a brief break in the cloud near a feature called the Second Step at roughly 8,570 meters. Then the clouds closed in and Mallory and Irvine vanished forever, and no one ever saw them alive again.

On May 1, 1999, an American-led search expedition discovered George Mallory‘s body on the North Face of Everest at approximately 8,157 meters. His body showed a broken right leg and rope injuries consistent with a serious fall. A photograph of his wife that he had said he planned to leave at the summit was not on his body, which some researchers take as circumstantial evidence that he may have reached the top. Andrew Irvine‘s body has never been found. Whether Mallory and Irvine summited Everest 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay still remains one of mountaineering’s greatest unsolved questions.

The First Confirmed Death on Everest: What Really Happened in 1922?

On June 7, 1922, George Mallory was leading a third summit attempt from the high camp on the North Col at approximately 7,000 metres. During the descent of his team, a large avalanche broke loose and swept seven Sherpa porters off the slope. George Mallory and the other Western team members survived but the seven Sherpa porters did not. Their deaths marked the first confirmed fatalities in the history of Everest climbing and showed the whole mountaineering community a reminder of how dangerous the mountain truly was.

The loss affected George Mallory deeply and he wrote about the deaths in his letters home and expressed profound guilt over the decision to attempt the route despite snow conditions. The tragedy did not stop the 1922 expedition team from trying again but it showed how little the early Everest pioneers understood about the mountain’s many ways of taking lives.

How Dangerous Was Everest in the Early Years of Climbing?

By today’s mountaineering measure, early Everest expeditions operated with almost no safety margin at all. You need to understand how far removed those pioneers were from even the most basic tools that today’s climbers take for granted. The climbers lacked the following resources that are considered basic and vital in today’s expedition journeys.

• No modern weather forecasting teams relied on barometers and visual observation only.
• No fixed ropes on technical sections which required climbers to move on ice and rock unprotected.
• There were no modern boots and teams wore leather boots with nailed soles highly unsuitable for extreme cold conditions.
• Oxygen systems in 1922 and 1924 weighed over ten kilograms and frequently malfunctioned during operation.
• No helicopter rescue capability was available, and an injured climber faced death or a gruelling manual carry by fellow team members.
• No radio communication above base camp in the earliest expeditions.

The death rate for early Everest attempts was extraordinarily high by any comparison to modern expeditions. Out of everyone who attempted to reach significant altitude on Everest in the 1920s, a large proportion of porters and climbers never returned safely. The knowledge that the mountain could kill had to be built painstakingly and at enormous human cost.

How Many People Have Died on Everest Since the First Fatality?

From those first seven Sherpa deaths in 1922 through to 2026, more than 344 people have died on Mount Everest. The number includes climbers of every nationality, Sherpa guides, and high-altitude support staff. The rate of death has changed dramatically across different periods of Everest history. In the 1920s, the death rate per summit attempt was dangerously high because very few people reached significant altitude. Through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, deaths continued as expeditions from many nations attempted the peak with progressively improving but limited quality basic climbing equipment.

The 1996 Mount Everest disaster claimed 15 lives, making it the second deadliest year on the climbing record. On April 18, 2014, an ice avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 Sherpa guides in a single moment and made it the deadliest single event in Everest history. The 2015 Nepal earthquake triggered an avalanche which killed 22 people at the lowest base camp. The three events just mentioned account for over 50 deaths on the mountain. Modern commercial Everest climbing has a much lower death rate per summit attempt than at any previous point in the mountain’s history because of improved weather forecasting, better equipment, and more rigorous safety standards.

Everest Death Statistics by Era

How the First Deaths Changed Everest Climbing History

The story of who died first on Everest is not a footnote in mountaineering history but a foundation of everything the climbers today know about the Himalayan safety and mountaineering. Every improvement in gear, weather forecasting, oxygen systems, and expedition management traces back in some way to the unfortunate loss of lives in the early years of expeditions.

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FAQs on Unfortunate Deaths in Nepal

1. Who officially holds the record as the first person to die on Everest?

The seven Sherpa porters killed in the avalanche of June 7, 1922 are collectively recognized as the first confirmed fatalities on Everest. Individual names from that group include Temba, Pasang, Dorje, and others as recorded by the expedition team.

2. Did George Mallory reach the summit before dying?

This question remains unanswered. His body was found in 1999 below where he was last seen alive, but there is no definitive evidence that a summit was recovered. The debate still continues among historians and mountaineers.

3. How many Sherpas have died on Everest in total?

Sherpa guides and high-altitude workers account for roughly one third of all deaths on Everest. The 2014 Khumbu Icefall avalanche, which killed 16 Sherpas in a single morning, remains the single deadliest event in Everest history.

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