30 Chinese climbing summits in Nepal, 2 die

KATHMANDU - Thirty climbers from China, 24 male and 6 female have been registered to scale various summits this spring but two of them have already died, officials said on Wednesday.

Li Xiaoshi, 58, from Taiwan, died while attempting the 8,516-meter-tall Lhotse Mountain. and Liu Xiangyang, 46, from Yunnan province, died while attempting the 8,463-meter-tall Makalu Mountain. Li got altitude sickness on May 18 at the height of 8, 000 meters while approaching Lhotse, according to Purna Chandra Bhattarai, joint secretary with Nepal's Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MOCTCA).

"Li died on the wee hours of Monday after being carried down to the altitude of 5,000 meters," Nivesh Karki, manager of Seven Summits Treks (SST), the expedition organizer, told Xinhua.

Besides Li, there are other seven Chinese climbers, all male, tried to climb the Lhotse Mountain, according to a list provided by the Mountaineering Division of MOCTCA.

Liu Xiangyang slipped off the mountain while descending from Makalu on May 10, according to Mingma Sherpa, SST's managing director.

Talking about dangers in climbing, Sherpa said, "There is one chance of survival and 99 chances of death at that high altitude. People who go there are not sure whether they will return alive."

Three Nepali mountaineers died on Mount Qomolangma (also known as Everest in the West) this climbing season, while six climbers died on the world's highest peak last season.

More than 3,000 people have climbed Mount Qomolangma and approximately 300 have perished since it was first conquered by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.