Body of 'Green Boots' climber on Everest for 30 years to be brought home

Warning: This article contains distressing images.

Indian authorities are seeking to retrieve the body of a climber known as ‘Green Boots’ who has been at the top of Mount Everest near the so-called ‘death zone’ for 30 years.

The climber is believed to be either Tsewang Paljor or Lance Naik Dorje Morup, who were both members of a six-person Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) team that became caught in a blizzard during an expedition in 1996.

Three of the team turned back, but Paljor, Morup, and one other named Subedar Tsewang Smanla decided to try and summit. None of them returned.

Since then. the body of Green Boots – one of 200 corpses believed to be on Everest – remains at around 27,700ft on the mountain’s northern slope facing Tibet, with climbers forced to step around him as part of their ascent.

A group of Chinese mountaineers managed to pull the body further under a boulder in 2014 so it was less visible.

The ITBP has now floated a tender to hire a high-altitude recovery agency to try and retrieve the body, Indian newspaper The Tribune reports.

‘Green Boot’s’ has been passed by climbers on the mountain for years / Credit:

The proposed operation would reportedly require at least six sherpas, who would climb 8,000 metres to retrieve the body and bring it down the mountain, before repatriating the remains to India.

It was reported that the ITBP hopes to complete the mission between June and September 2026, and it will be conducted in line with religious and cultural protocols.

The tender document is said to identify Green Boots as Morup.

‘Green Boots’ is not the only body Everest climbers might see as they make their ascent, with the body of Francys Arsentiev, known as ‘Sleeping Beauty’, visible until she was moved out of view in 2007.

Arsentiev, who was the first American woman to summit Mount Everest without bottled oxygen, died aged 40 in 1998.

The top portion of Everest, above 26,000 feet, is commonly known as the ‘death zone’, and also features an area nicknamed ‘Rainbow Valley’ due to the many multi-coloured jackets of the bodies within it.