3 climbers dead, 2 missing on Mount Everest

International trekkers pass through a glacier at the
Mount Everest base camp in Nepal in February. A
Nepal official says some 30 climbers have gotten
frostbite or become sick on Mount Everest, in
addition to three who died in recent days on the
world's highest mountain. (Tashi Sherpak,
KATHMANDU, Nepal — The dangers of scaling
Mount Everest again have been made clear as three
climbers have died over the past three days and
two are missing, reports say.
According to CNN, Phurba Sherpa, 25, fell to his
death on Thursday while working to fix a route just
150 meters from the summit. Eric Arnold, 36, of the
Netherlands died Friday night of a suspected heart
attack or altitude sickness. Arnold had reached the
summit and was heading back down the mountain.
Maria Strydom, 34, of Australia, began suffering
altitude sickness and died Saturday before she
could be rescued. Strydom had reached camp IV,
the final camp before the summit.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, altitude
sickness can occur when a person goes to extreme
heights too quickly and oxygen fails to reach the
body's tissues. Severe symptoms include coughing,
breathlessness, irrational behavior, inability to walk
straight or sit up, hallucinations and frothy, blood-
tinged spit caused by lung damage.
The two missing climbers, Paresh Nath and Goutam
Ghosh, were last seen Saturday near the summit,
known as the "death zone," the Associated Press
reports .
Nearly 400 climbers have reached the 29,035-foot
summit since May 11 thanks to favorable weather.
But even with good weather, the mountain remains
very dangerous. The BBC reports 30 climbers have
suffered frostbite or become ill.
Climbing of Everest resumed this year after two
years off because of a major earthquake in 2015
and an avalanche that killed 16 sherpas in 2014.
Thousands of people have reached the top of
Everest since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and
Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first did it in 1953, but more
than 250 people have died trying.