Snowstorm traps hundreds of hikers on Mount Everest during China's national holiday

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00:00With an update on that massive operation to rescue hundreds of trekkers stranded on Mount

00:04Everest, authorities say hundreds of others have been rescued after a sudden snowstorm

00:09struck, leaving the hikers with no way out at high-altitude campsites over 4,900 meters.

00:18While the unseasonable storm hit the Tibetan side of Everest on Friday during China's busy

00:23Golden Week holiday, a peak season for tourism in the area. Monty Francis takes a look now at

00:28the rescue operation. Considered the highest point on Earth, it became the site of a high-stakes

00:38rescue operation Monday, as a group of hikers slowly made their way down to a safer elevation.

00:44A weekend snowstorm caught hundreds of Chinese hikers by surprise, trapping them under a meter

00:51of snow. Do we know when the rescuers are going to arrive? We don't know. We still don't know.

00:56This woman posted a video on social media while inside her tent, afraid of being crushed by the

01:03weight of the snow. Several tents have collapsed because of the snow. The hikers were trapped on

01:09Mount Everest's eastern face in Tibet at an elevation of about 5,000 meters, or 16,000 feet. At its highest

01:17peak, Everest reaches about 8,800 meters, making it the tallest in the world. To carry out the rescue,

01:25teams used drones to locate the group, then trekked up the mountain with horses and oxen to clear a

01:31path so hikers could safely descend. Experts say that given the temperature on the mountain,

01:37hypothermia is an even bigger threat than being buried by the snow.

01:41So you're in a temperature range of, let's say, minus 3 Celsius to plus 10.

01:45And actually, that's quite a risky temperature range, because anything above freezing means that

01:54you're potentially going to be contending with wet. You're going to get wet.

01:58The ordeal, the result of a rare October snowstorm and a surge in hikers observing a week-long national

02:04holiday in China. Not just for professional climbers, Mount Everest has become a popular site for less

02:10experienced hikers as well. The Chinese government says that a record number of people visited the

02:15Everest region last year.

02:19We're going to talk more on the situation on Mount Everest. Let's bring in Carl Carter,

02:24who is an associate professor in tourism marketing at Swansea University. Carl, thank you so much for

02:30your time. This really couldn't have happened at a worse time, really, could it? Because it's during

02:35China's busy Golden Week holiday, which is a peak season for tourism in the area.

02:41Yeah, well, that certainly would have attracted a lot of tourists to the area. And I think actually

02:46in the West, we're not aware of how many tourists are actually traveling now from China to the north

02:53face of Everest. Traditionally, you know, tourists have been going to Nepal and maybe you get 50,000

02:59tourists a year going the Everest-based chunk in Nepal. But on the northern side, we now get half

03:05a million Chinese tourists traveling to see the largest mountain on earth.

03:11We don't have much information on the rescue effort. I wanted to pick your brain a little bit just to

03:16try and explain to us how authorities are perhaps going about this massive operation.

03:23Well, it's obviously a big task, particularly in what is still a very remote area. And we have to

03:28remember that, you know, this is an area that's higher than Mont Blanc. You know, the whole region is

03:34at severe altitude. You know, and generally the conditions, you know, this time of year should be

03:41relatively favorable. But that eastern side of Everest, which has become popular with trekkers, as you can see

03:46in some of the pictures here, that does get a lot more precipitation than some of the Tibetan plateau

03:53further north. So, you know, it's not unsurprising to see this amount of snowfall.

04:00Well, Carl, in recent years, Mount Everest has been plagued by many different concerns,

04:05overcrowding, environmental concerns, and also a series of fatal climbing attempts. There's also been

04:11disasters in the surrounding areas. This really all just begs the question, is climbing Mount Everest

04:17worth it, really? Is it worth the risk? Well, this is the thing. I mean, at the end of the day,

04:24it's just a big rock, and it's the tallest rock in the world. So everybody wants to go and see it

04:30and have their piece of it. And that's the work that I've been doing. And that's been, you know,

04:34ever since the beginning of mountaineering. So I did a lot of work looking at the early British

04:39expeditions, which actually traveled through Tibet to these faces. So I think that's what people want

04:44to do. They want to follow in the footsteps and, you know, get as close as they can to the mountains.

04:49But as you can see here, a lot of the Chinese tourists aren't really equipped, perhaps don't

04:54have quite as long an outdoor heritage as you might see in the West. Maybe don't have the outdoor

05:01skills that we might expect in first aid, being able to cross rivers, having the right equipment,

05:08you know, in, you know, this is can, as your previous commentator said, you know, be quite

05:13a dangerous situation for hypothermia. But at the same time, I think the Chinese government,

05:18you know, they have all of the resources available to them. And we'll certainly be doing a lot to

05:24try and get some of those trekkers down off the mountain.

05:27This storm was sudden. Is there though enough advertisement or is there enough messaging on the

05:35risks that surrounds climbing the Mount Everest?

05:41Well, I think, you know, partly this is this sort of new emergence of adventure tourism in China,

05:47you know, is becoming very popular, you know, like we might have seen in the Alps, but this is very

05:51recent. So, you know, people don't necessarily have that information. And the big difference, if you're a

05:57Western tourist and you travel to Everest, you have to go with a guided group. But if you're a Chinese

06:03citizen, you don't have, as long as you inform the authorities that you're going hiking, you don't

06:08have to have a guide or any prior experience, you can just be a solo trekker. And there's no,

06:15yeah, there isn't, you know, a lot of kind of trekking information, or indeed, some of the good

06:20things they have on the Nepalese side, such as a sort of trekker registration scheme and having a

06:25trekking identity card before you set out.

06:27Well, would any of the stranded trekkers at all envision that this storm could happen? Do you

06:33think any of them in their minds would have, you know, thought about the risk, perhaps dressed more

06:38warmly in case, have, you know, stronger gear? Do you think they would have had that come up at all?

06:46Well, I think, you know, again, it's just become so popular so quickly, you know, obviously people are

06:51going to have, you know, jackets and hopefully have sturdy boots. But I've seen some reports that people

06:56just, you know, had a very thin kind of raincoats to deal with this sort of conditions, you know, and

07:02you know, yeah, you do have to remember, this is a high altitude mountain environment with all of

07:07those, you know, changeable weather situations that you can have. I mean, ironically, what we were

07:13looking at was the decline of the glaciers. I mean, glaciers in this area have declined by

07:18probably a third over the past couple of decades. And certainly the main glacier that they're trekking

07:24next to has lost a lot of ice. But simultaneously, now we're getting, you know, changeable weather and

07:30actually increased precipitation. So, you know, that's obviously then making the weather actually

07:36wilder in these places.

07:38Well, fingers crossed that the authorities managed to get all the stranded trekkers down. Karl, thank you so much

07:45for your insight. Thank you so much for joining us on the programme. Really good to have your time today.

07:49Thank you. Let's hope so. Thank you.

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