American climber dies on Mount Everest

Two KATHMANDU, NEPAL — climbers, one from Alabama and the other from Slovakia, died Sunday on Mount Everest, and an Indian man went missing while descending the world’s top peak, officials said.

Dinesh Bhattarai, the director general of Nepal’s Department of Tourism, said the American climber, Dr. Roland Yearwood, 50, died near the summit of the mountain, at 27,600 feet. The cause of his death was not immediately known.

Another official with the tourism department, Gyanendra Shrestha, said later Sunday that a man from Slovakia, Vladimir Strba, who was part of a separate expedition, also died. Strba, 48, died at a camp at an elevation of about 26,200 feet, Shrestha said.

Yearwood, from Georgiana, Alabama, had been part of a 15-member team climbing Everest.

“We’ll know more after Mr. Yearwood’s Sherpa returns to the base camp,” said Murari Sharma, the managing director at Everest Parivar Treks, an expedition agency. “We will have to send separate Sherpas for the recovery of the body.”

The Indian climber, Ravi Kumar, 26, who was part of a third expedition, went missing after climbing the summit.

“He was very tired. Mr. Kumar couldn’t walk while descending from the peak of the summit,” said Thupden Sherpa, the general manager at Arun Treks and Expedition. “We have sent three Sherpas for the rescue.”

Yearwood had survived the 2015 Nepal earthquake on Everest while attempting to ascend from the northern side.

The start of the Everest summit season had already brought at least two notable deaths. Ueli Steck, 40, a renowned mountain climber nicknamed the Swiss Machine, and Min Bahadur Sherchan, 85, a Nepalese mountaineer, died.

A total of 375 climbers received permits to climb Everest for this season from Nepal’s side. But the season has started slowly because of extreme wind and snow.