A 39-year-old U.S. bartender died while descending Mount Everest last weekend. Michael O'Brien, a driver and bartender from Seattle, plunged to his death in the treacherous Khumbu Icefall, a jumble of unstable blocks of ice that stretch from the first high camp on Everest to the base of the 29,035-foot mountain.
A total of 1,583 people from 65 countries have climbed Mount Everest from either Nepal or Tibet since it was first scaled by New Zealand's Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Around 185 climbers have died on its slopes. O'Brien, a member of a team of seven foreign climbers, is the eighth American to die on Everest.
Mount Everest has not lost its allure for foreign climbers despite Nepal's Maoist revolt and King Gyanendra's seizure of power on Feb. 1. Overall tourism to Nepal has fallen a third this year but Nepal's tourism ministry says it has issued 19 permits to foreign expeditions to climb Everest in the spring season, up from 13 last year.
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