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Mystery identity of 'Green Boots' climber is finally solved after DNA test
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- onemoresoop 3mo agoGreenboots has been laying there frozen in the snow since the 90s. It even became a landmark for other climbers. Im glad they managed to at least identify the poor soul. Who knows how much longer he’s going to rest there..
- KomoD 3mo agoLooks like they might retrieve the body. > The Indo-Tibetan Border Police is soliciting bids from high altitude recovery agencies for a mission to retrieve the remains of a climber long known only as "Green Boots" from the mountain's northern slope https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mount-everest-green-boots-body-of-climber-recovery-plan-india/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mount-everest-green-boots-body-...
- msephton 3mo agoThat's mentioned in the article
- sillysaurusx 3mo agoA lot of people come to HN for the comments. It’s often useful to gauge a story by public sentiment first. That said, you’re ultimately correct that it’s in the article, but I appreciated it. :)
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo agoI think Mallory's body was left until 1999. He died in 1924.
- bhickey 3mo agoConrad Anker covered his body in scree. Subsequent expeditions have been unable to locate it. There's speculation that it was secretly removed from the mountain for political reasons.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo agoPolitical? That sounds odd.
- bhickey 3mo ago[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/01/it-doesnt-make-any-sense-new-twist-in-mystery-of-mount-everest-and-the-british-explorers-missing-bodies https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/01/it-doe...
- mkl 3mo agoThe location of Mallory's body was unknown until 1999. The location of this one has been known pretty much the whole time.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo agoI think another climber spotted him in the 1930s, but didn't mention it, because he didn't want to have a media circus.
- gokhan 3mo agoIs this an AI generated comment?
- fsckboy 3mo agoI think—no
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- onemoresoop 3mo agoFor real? You’re pretty off at spotting the LLM patterns and feel.
- gokhan 3mo agowell, looks no different than those summary comments on twitter.
- satvikpendem 3mo ago> Indian climber Dorje Morup, 47.
- ferfumarma 3mo agoFTA: Known simply as 'Green Boots' because of his distinctive bright green mountaineering footwear still protruding from the snow and ice, the remains have now been identified as Indian climber Dorje Morup, 47. For decades, many mountaineers believed the body belonged to fellow Indian climber Tsewang Paljor, 28. The DNA comparison has now ended that long-running mystery. The identification was confirmed by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) ahead of a bid to recover the body from Everest's notorious 'death zone' at an altitude of more than 8,000 metres.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3mo agoThe natural next question... where is Paljor?
- lukan 3mo agoBuried in snow?
- sillysaurusx 3mo agoGreenboots is so iconic. Other people use him as a marker. Glad he got some attention. It’s always seemed a shame that it’s impossible to give him a proper burial.
- aaron695 3mo ago[dead]
- Mistletoe 3mo agoInteresting, I always thought it was the younger guy. Here's kudos to Dorje for flossing in those bright green boots at 47.
- IgorPartola 3mo agoSlightly off topic, but I first heard of Green Boots in the book The Climb. I picked it up completely randomly from a used book store six states away from home and wow what a find! It is a riveting story start to finish and I recommend it to everyone who is looking for a great read. My partner got her hyper fixation on high altitude mountaineering from it despite having no interest in ever actually climbing a mountain herself from reading it. If you haven’t yet I highly recommend checking it out.
- blackguardx 3mo agoI've only read Into Thin Air, but that book makes Boukreev (author of The Climb) seem like an unreliable narrator. I have zero interest in high altitude mountaineering (I prefer lower altitude rock climbing) but I should probably check out The Climb to get both sides.
- IgorPartola 3mo agoThe Climb was a great response to it and according to my partner who then read more books about that year’s expeditions it is much closer to what happened than Into Thin Air.
- awakeasleep 3mo agoI can’t believe you guys have not read BOTH. The real pleasure is in reading both contradictory accounts! And there have been articles written in magazines including perspectives of other people who were there, as well.
- krunck 3mo agoIf you are averse to the Daily Mail, you can try this article instead: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/22/mt-everest-green-boots-man-cave-climber-identity https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/22/mt-everest-gre...
- neilv 3mo agoI thought the Guardian might decide not to show a photo of a corpse of someone probably with living friends and close relatives. Nope, they do it too, like the Daily Mail, but with a big yellow GUI control to reveal it, like a weird macabre vintage "multimedia". > Use the slider below to show a picture of the body of the climber known as Green Boots where it lies on Mount Everest. Some readers may find the image distressing Just because the photo has been shown before doesn't mean it needs to be shown now, especially now that it's been identified, in in this context.
- Dylan16807 3mo ago> Nope, they do it too, like the Daily Mail, but with a big yellow GUI control to reveal it, like a weird macabre vintage "multimedia". What a weird description. You make the content warning sound like it's a bad thing. Slider versus button hardly matters. > I thought the Guardian might decide not to show a photo of a corpse of someone probably with living friends and close relatives. You can't see anything but his clothes and this happened decades ago. A hidden by default photo isn't going to hurt those people. Maybe we could argue the article and attention itself could be distressing and shouldn't exist, but I think the news value wins out there.
- epihelix 3mo agoIf poor Green Boots was staring up at the camera, empty eye sockets and all, I'd understand this. But there is nothing distressing in the image; the out-of-focus fuzziness makes the photo seem if anything substantially more macabre than it actually is. Given Green Boots' fame, it was interesting to see what the actual scene climbers experience was. So I think the inclusion of the photo was justified, in these unusual circumstances.
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- snorkel 3mo agoI can’t imagine having a hobby that involves passing by, and in some cases climbing over, the exposed remains of others who died doing that same activity.
- killingtime74 3mo agoYeah and also knowing if something happens your team will definitely leave you
- TFNA 3mo agoA good friend of mine is a professional alpinist who focuses only climbing eight-thousanders with no supplementary oxygen. Through him I’ve met others and learned about this whole community. A number of people are as weird and eccentric as us here in computer-nerd circles; one is tempted to armchair-diagnose some as autistic and climbing as their fixation, so something like Green Boots or the death of peers just won’t stop them. (I envy them that their fixation gives them the physique of a Greek god and stories that can impress any listener, so they often manage to be very socially successful in spite of their quirks.)
- zanderwohl 3mo agoWell, rest in peace. If they do remove him, I hope nobody else loses their lives in the process. I understand they often don't bring people down because of the difficulty and danger of carrying something has heavy as a person at that altitude. "Rainbow Valley" is a region near the top with many bodies, so-called because of the variety of coats and other gear. Most photos on Google are AI-generated, though.
- Alien1Being 3mo agoHe was one of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. Let us pay tribute to the courage of our Tibetan friends. "The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is a central armed police force in India, under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is responsible for guarding India's border with Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It was formed in the aftermath of the Sino-Indian War of 1962"
- LennyWhiteJr 3mo agohonestly just leave him. it's a more metal burial place than any other he'll get anywhere else.
- iJohnDoe 3mo agoSerious question. When climbers are walking by bodies, do they check if they are still alive or need help? Is there nothing that could be done anyways? Face down means don’t bother checking? Any human not moving in Rainbow Valley is presumed dead? I imagine you’re trying to keep yourself alive and keep your eyes forward, and realize you can’t do anything to help them anyways.
- jmalicki 3mo agoThere was a case of a climber (David Sharp) that was having issues and found shelter in the vicinity of green boots, and the theory was that part of why he died is that the 40 climbers who passed by him without stopping just assumed he was green boots and didn't pay attention. https://allthatsinteresting.com/david-sharp https://allthatsinteresting.com/david-sharp It's why green boots was moved (and is no longer a landmark), and David Sharp was also moved.
- redsocksfan45 3mo ago[dead]
- ekjhgkejhgk 3mo agoWhat exactly is dangerous about this climb? What kills people specifically? I hear people talk about the weather, visibility, injuries, etc etc. But all of those, if you stay put they're not problems, right? The only real problem I can think of is temperatures so low that your equipment can't contain heat loss for long enough and your body will shut down. Ok temperature. So if this is the only danger (that can't be addressed by staying put) then could it be addressed by thicker clothes and/or electrically heated clothes? Not trolling, real question.
- chuckadams 3mo ago> What exactly is dangerous about this climb? What kills people specifically? Lack of oxygen, mostly. Bad in itself, but if the temperatures drop to dangerous lows, you're less likely to notice because you're out also of your head due to hypoxia/hypercapnia.
- RetroTechie 3mo agoArticle mentions helicopters can't (or safely) fly there due to thin air at altitude. Sounds logical for existing helicopters designed to operate at lower altitude. But wouldn't it be possible to design or adapt a helicopter specifically for this purpose? It's not that aerodynamics / lift etc suddenly stop working, it's 'just' the numbers changing. Eg. a helicopter with longer rotor blades, or dual-rotor design might work? Bonus points if it could fly unmanned to not risk pilots' lives unnecessarily.
- ChucklsTheBeard 3mo agoThe wind is the major problem. During the ~1 week of the year where it's safest to summit, they're typically looking at 15kph winds with up to 50kph gusts. Conditions are worse for the rest of the year. It's unsafe to try to hover near the ground in those conditions, and the thinner atmosphere just compounds that problem. Also, you're talking about designing a new, specialized helicopter... that's not cheap, and someone would have to pay for it. What's the commercial incentive?
- warumdarum 3mo agoWhy is there no such thing as a thermal insulated, glued in place pressurizeable bubble tent?