Renowned Japanese climber Kuriki dies on Everest, raising toll this month to 3

KATHMANDU, Nepal — An accomplished Japanese alpinist and motivational speaker, who lost nine fingers to frostbite on a previous attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest, died on the world’s highest peak Monday after he slipped and fell.

The death of the climber, Nobukazu Kuriki, brought the death toll on the mountain to three this month.

“We are in shock,” said Tika Ram Gurung, managing director of BochiBochi Trek, the climbing company that organized Kuriki’s trip. “It is a huge loss to the mountaineering world.”

Gurung confirmed the details of Kuriki’s death.

On Sunday, Gjeorgi Petkov, 63, a Macedonian climber, died after he collapsed from what appeared to be a cardiac arrest near Camp Three, more than 20,000 feet above sea level, on the south side of the mountain. Early this month, Lam Babu Sherpa went missing on Everest, which straddles the border between Nepal and Tibet. An official confirmed Sherpa’s death and said his bag and shoes had been found.

Before his final summit push Monday, Kuriki, 35, had updated his social media accounts to say he was suffering from a cough and fever but he thought he could continue climbing.

Speaking by telephone from base camp, Gyanendra Shrestha, an official with the Nepalese Ministry of Tourism, said Kuriki’s body would be airlifted to Kathmandu, the capital, for an autopsy.

Gurung, the expedition organizer, said Kuriki had died near Camp Three.

Over the years, Kuriki amassed thousands of followers on social media and often spoke to soldout lecture halls about the importance of perseverance.

In 2012, he lost nine of his fingers to frostbite. Two years later, he returned to mountaineering and finished a solo climb of Broad Peak in the Himalayas, the 12thhighest peak in the world, without the supplemental oxygen most climbers use at such altitudes, where the air is dangerously thin.