Australian, Dutch climbers die after summiting Mt Everest

A Dutch and an Australian mountaineer have died of altitude sickness after scaling the world's highest peak Mount Everest, officials said today, days after an Indian climber lost his life after falling sick while descending Nepal's Dhaulagiri peak.
Eric Arnold, 35, from Netherlands died yesterday while descending the highest peak in the world after he became sick due to altitude sickness, said Mingma Sherpa, Managing Director of Seven Summit Treks that managed the expedition.
"Mountain guides are working to bring the body back to base camp first before flying back to Kathmandu," said an official at the Tourism Ministry.
Arnold yesterday posted a picture on his Twitter account saying he had climbed the 8,850-metre high peak on his fifth attempt. Last year, he was among the climbers caught in a deadly avalanche on Everest base camp following a massive earthquake.

In a separate incident, Australian woman climber Dr Maria Elizabeth Strydom died near the Camp IV on Nepal side today, officials said.
Strydom, 34, lost her life after she suffered snow blindness followed by stroke, according to Shiva Bahadur Sapkota, a liaison officer deputed by the Department of Tourism at the Everest base camp. She was accompanied by her husband during the expedition.

A Finance lecturer at Monash Business School under Monash University, Strydom was heading to the world's highest peak when she was taken ill, according to Mingma Sherpa, the owner of Seven Summit Treks, which locally managed their expedition.

Strydom had already climbed Mt Denali in Alaska, Mt Aconcagua in Argentina, Mt Ararat in eastern Turkey and Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa among other peaks.
Earlier on Thursday, Rajib Bhattacharya, who had scaled Everest in 2011, complained of difficulty in vision before he collapsed and died while on his way down from the 8,167-metre Dhaulagiri peak.
A Nepali Sherpa guide also perished on Thursday after he slipped and fell 2,000 metres down Mount Lhotse, the world's fourth-highest peak.
Meanwhile, Lhakpa Sherpa, 42, a Nepal-born woman from the US, has broken her own record for the most summits of the world's highest mountain as she scaled Everest for a record seventh time.

Sherpa, a mother of three, reached the summit of the 8,850-metre peak from the Tibetan side yesterday.
Altogether 350 climbers have successfully scaled Everest this season after two consecutive years of deadly disasters, according to Mountaineering section of the Tourism Ministry.
On May 19, 202 mountaineers climbed Everest on a single day setting a record.
Nepal issued 289 permits to foreign mountaineers for this year's brief spring climbing season, which runs from mid-April to the end of May, after two consecutive failed seasons.
Hundreds of climbers fled Everest last year after an earthquake-triggered avalanche at base camp killed 18 people.