Three decades after a dead climber clad in lime-green boots became one of Mount Everest's most macabre landmarks, India is preparing to bring him down—and may have just rewritten his story. The Guardian reports that a new government tender document seeking bids for a mission to recover the body long known only as "Green Boots" identifies him not as Tsewang Paljor, the Indian climber who had long been thought to have died in that spot in the 1996 storm chronicled in Into Thin Air, but as his teammate, Dorje Morup.
They were part of a six-person team made up of members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), reports the Times; three turned back during the storm, and the three who pushed on all perished. Their bodies have not been recovered. The ITBP document seeks a specialist team—made up of at least six veteran Sherpas—to enter Everest's "death zone," recover the frozen body from its rocky alcove on the north side at roughly 27,000 feet, and deliver it to Delhi by October.
Mountaineers and guides tell the Guardian it would be a challenging, likely-40-day-long operation that could cost around $150,000 and require hauling up to 400 pounds of ice-hardened remains down lethal terrain. It would be "double the danger of normal climbing," Everest Sherpa Expedition founder Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa tells CBS News. He has been involved in previous recovery efforts and doubts the mission can be done in the specified timeframe, and suggests waiting until spring.
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