Kenneth Glad
A case is drawing new scrutiny after official paperwork pointed to a different identity. Any attempt to recover the remains would involve danger, cost and difficult choices.
India’s Indo-Tibetan Border Police has issued a tender, a formal request for companies or specialist teams to submit bids for a project, seeking help to recover the climber known as “Green Boots” from Everest’s north-east ridge route from Tibet, according to The Guardian.
The tender identifies the climber as Dorje Morup rather than Tsewang Paljor, whose name has long been linked to the remains. Both men were members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police expedition that was caught in a deadly storm near Everest’s summit in 1996.
The document says Morup’s identity was confirmed through an earlier verification or technical assessment, though it does not explain the process.
The mountain keeps its dead
Bodies are often left on Everest because recovery can endanger the living. Above 8,000 metres, weather, terrain and low oxygen give teams little room for delay or error.
The planned mission would require at least six Sherpas with multiple Everest summits. The team must document the operation and transport the body to Delhi by October, writes the British newspaper.
Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa told the paper that frozen remains in climbing equipment can weigh up to 200kg. He recalled seeing the body in 2006:
“When I touch[ed] him, I clear[ed] the snow a little bit. Then I totally saw Green Boots lying down under that snow.”
A marker near the summit
The nickname came from the climber’s bright Koflach boots, which stood out against the ice, rock and snow. Over time, the body’s location near Everest’s upper north-east route turned it into an unsettling point of reference for climbers pushing toward the summit.
Its presence also became part of a wider debate about death on Everest. Smithsonian Magazine has reported that more than 200 bodies have been left on the mountain, many in places where removal would be dangerous, costly or physically impossible.
That is why the new identification has drawn attention beyond the recovery itself.
“That’s kind of a mystery to me, why all of a sudden the identity has changed,” Everest blogger Alan Arnette told The Guardian. “I’m glad that they’re bringing him down [but] it’s going to be a gruesome task.”
Risk before closure
Guy Cotter, a New Zealand climber with long experience in Himalayan expeditions, said the emotional case for a recovery must be weighed against the danger faced by those asked to carry it out.
“For families to have a body returned from the mountain brings closure, as long as it’s not putting other people at undue risk,” he told The Guardian.
That balance is especially difficult on Everest, where a recovery team may have to work for hours in thin air, unstable weather and steep terrain while handling frozen remains.
“There have been situations with body recoveries where more people have died. It’s a very thin line,” Cotter added.
Whether the mission ultimately succeeds remains unclear. The proposed recovery would not only involve one of the most challenging body retrieval operations ever attempted on Everest, but could also finally answer a question that has lingered on the mountain for nearly three decades:
Who was the climber the world came to know only as Green Boots?
Sources: The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine
