In Everest climbing parlance, Green Boots is the name given to the corpse of Indian climber Tsewang Paljor (b. 10 April 1968) on the Northeast ridge route of Mount Everest. There is little doubt that the body is that of Paljor,[1] who was wearing green Koflach boots on the day he and two others apparently summited. On the way down, he fell victim to exposure in the storm of May 10th 1996, one among the eight who died that day. Since his corpse lies on the popular northern route, his body is encountered frequently and came to be known as Green Boots.
Paljor was born in Sakti village in Leh (Jammu and Kashmir).[2] He joined the Indo-Tibetan Border Police as a constable in 1986. He was part of the first Indian team to attempt climbing the peak from the Northeast route.
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The Everest disaster of 1996 is well known in the mountaineering circles for the deaths of eight climbers on the 10-11 May 1996. Thanks to Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, the two movies based on that book, and Anatoli Boukreev's book "The Climb", the names of Rob Hall, Scott Fischer, Yasuko Namba, Doug Hansen and Andy Harris are well known. Less well-known are the other three fatalities of the day, who were the climbers from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) expedition from India. The expedition was led by Commandant (equiv to Lt Col) Mohinder Singh, and is credited as being the first Indian ascent of Everest from the East side.[3]
On 10 May 1996, Subedar Tsewang Samanla, Lance Naik (equiv to Lance Corporal) Dorje Morup, and Head Constable Tsewang Paljor got caught in the blizzard short of the summit. While three of the six-member team turned down, Samanla, Paljor and Morup decided to go for the summit[4] At around 6.00pm (3.45pm Nepal Time), the three climbers radioed to their expedition leader that they had arrived at the summit.
There is dispute whether the three actually reached the summit or not. Krakauer claims that the climbers were at 28,550 feet, roughly 500 feet short of the top most point. This is based on the interview given by a later Japanese team to the London Financial Express. Due to bad visibility and thick clouds which obscured the summit, the climbers believed they had reached the top. They left an offering of prayer flags, katas, and pitons. Here the leader Samanla decided to spend extra time for religious ceremonies and instructed the other two to move down.
There was no radio contact after that. Back at the camps below, anxious team members saw two headlamps moving slightly above the second step – at 8570 meters. None of the three managed to come back to high camp at 8320 meters.
(All Times Beijing Time)
The Indian expedition leader told later, "The Japanese had initially pledged to help the search for the missing Indians. But hours later, they pressed on with their attempt to reach the summit, despite bad weather."[6]
The Japanese team denied that they had ever encountered the dying climbers on the way up.[5]
Captain Kohli, an official of the Indian Mountaineering Federation, who earlier had denounced the Japanese, later retracted his claim that the Japanese had reported meeting the Indians on 10 May.[5]
"The ITBP accepted the Fukuoka party statements that they neither abandoned nor refused to help the Indians."[5] The ITBP's director general "commented that a misunderstanding arose from communication difficulties between Indian attack party members and their Base Camp."[5]
The term Green Boots originates from the green mountaineering boots the body still wears.
It is not known as to when the term Green Boots came into Everest parlance. Over the years it became a common term as all the expeditions from the north side encountered the body of the Indian Climber curled up in the limestone alcove cave. The cave is located at 27,890 feet (8 500 m), and is littered with spent oxygen bottles. Paljor was the only one found by the Japanese climbers, shortly above first step. The rock cave is in the same area.
When the British mountaineer David Sharp died during his solo attempt in 2006, he was found in a hypothermic situation in "Green Boots' Cave". David Sharp would ultimately die of extreme cold, and his body was left lying a few feet from 'Green Boots'. It was theorised on the documentary Dying For Everest (broadcast on SKY 20.04.09) that some other climbers passed by David Sharp without offering assistance, believing him to be "Green Boots".
Ian Woodall is a British climber who was on the mountain on that fatal day in 1996, leading a South African expedition. He was at camp 4 during the storm and, having returned to basecamp for 5 days rest, reached the top a couple of weeks later.[7] Claiming that the body of the climber has continued to haunt him, Woodall returned to the mountain in 2007 with a different mission: not to summit but to help fallen climbers find their last resting place in dignity. They included Francys Arsentiev, the first American woman to have summited Mt Everest without bottled oxygen in 1998. He had planned to return in 2011 to move the body of Tsewang Paljor, but did not.[8]
