Green Boots Finally Identified on Mount Everest. Why Bringing Him Home May Be Impossible and a Bad Idea.

For nearly 30 years, the climber long referred to as "Green Boots" has remained one of Mount Everest's most haunting and recognizable landmarks. Now, after DNA testing, the Government of India says the climber has finally been identified, and an extraordinary recovery mission is being considered.

But should it happen?

I welcome rigorous debate on the ethics, decisions, and systemic issues of Mount Everest. Please share your thoughts in the comments section. 

SMALL CLARIFICATION: During the segment I refer to the 1996 Indo-Tibetan Border Police expedition as pursuing a "first Indian ascent." I intended to say the first Indian ascent of Everest from the North (Tibetan) side.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Every climber on the north side of Everest passes something chilling. It's a man curled up in a cave at 8,500 meters. A mission to remove his body in 2007 failed, and it's been reported that some years later they tried to hide him behind a rock. For 30 years, they called this man Green Boots because of his unknown identity, and he became a signpost, one of the most iconic and disturbing images of the dangers of climbing Mount Everest. Millions of people around the world recognize these Green Boots, and almost nobody knew his name. I'm gonna tell you his real name today. I've done two videos about the person referred to as Green Boots and incorrectly identified who that person was, like all other people in the world until now, because we know, because of DNA tests that were taken two years ago, his identity is certain now. And I'm gonna tell you why, after considering what India is intending to do to locate that body and remove it from the mountain, why I feel he should stay on the mountain under certain conditions. This might be a controversial position, it might not be. This is a video where you certainly will have your idea of what should be done because I've covered numerous stories about bodies being recovered on Mount Everest after these people perished and were located. Removing a body from high up in the death zone is not a trivial affair, and it is not an inexpensive affair either. It's very, very dangerous. Let's get right into it. For three decades since the storm, made infamous by the book Into Thin Air by John Krakower, many believed that the remains of this Indian gentleman on the north side of the mountain were those of Suang Paljor. I've covered this in a previous video. I'll put the link in the description below. He was a young climber from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and he died along with two of his teammates in that storm. He was identified by these distinctive green Koflak boots, and thus he got the nickname Green Boots. It's now known as fact that the remains are that of Paljor's teammate Dorje Mora. In 2024, the Indian government quietly sent a team up to go and retrieve a DNA sample from the remains. And the results came in and they held on to that information until the spring of 2026. And definitively, those remains were those of Dorje Morup. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police talking about those three gentlemen who perished in 1996, they sent a request for bids to recover, and the wording went, We want someone to recover Dorje Morup's body from Everest. If your organization has the experience and capability, submit a proposal telling us how you would do it, what it will cost, and why you're qualified. So much of the focus of the events of that night have gone to the south side. The now very well told story of Rob Hall and Scott Fisher, the eight people who died on the south side, the tragedy that ensued that night, but these three gentlemen essentially quietly perished there with very little notice made of their deaths. And now, with the results of this DNA testing, there are two families in India who have a huge narrative changed in their lives. The family of Swang Paljor has now been made aware that their loved one is not identified and missing somewhere on the mountain. And now the family of Dorje Morup now knows that the body of their loved one has been located. And now, with the official bid or request for bids asked for by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the family now will essentially be awaiting the recovery of the body so they can close the circle on the loss of their loved one. The request that goes in states that the recovery mission would take place anywhere from June into September. Most of us know that nothing really happens on the mountain in June or July, and August is when the post-monsoon climbing season begins, and that's when it would most optimally take place. Because so much of the focus of the 1996 disaster was on the south side of the mountain, names now ingrained into the minds of millions of people who are familiar with that story. Very little emphasis has been placed on that Indo-Tibetan border police expedition where six gentlemen set out to become the first Indians to summit the mountain. At 3:45 in the afternoon, part of that team radioed down into base camp that they'd reached the top. And whether they actually made it to the top or not is really a question that will never be answered. The weather was absolutely horrendous. It was complete white out, but they said they were on the top. But the Himalayan database has confirmed and at least accepts that they did make it to the summit. And so on that afternoon, upon their descent, they were caught out in the ferocity of that storm with no place to go or to hide. And so India, again, has requested formal bids. They've asked for six elite Sherpa, suggesting they would require up to 40 days on the mountain. The intent would be to recover the body and have it delivered to Delhi, India, by October. And so this is now meant to take any time, as I said, between June to September. Curious, very interesting, that they are saying it has to be six elite Sherpas. Sherpas are indeed some of the strongest climbers in the world, but fascinating to consider that they said that and that there are no other teams that would be able to make a bid on that. There are many, many strong climbers and capable climbers out there who are not Sherpa, who very well might have Sherpa on their team. And now because this mission will be taking place in the late summer or the post-monsoon, it will be colder and snowier on the mountain. Those are how conditions change on the mountain. So not only will they be working well into the death zone at 8,500 meters, they'll be working in colder temperatures with more snow, less certainty. And I'm going to tell you shortly in the video why it is so difficult to remove the body. Why I think I think this mission, as it's currently planned, is almost an impossible mission to complete successfully. And one of the reasons I think so is I'm going to share with you something that I don't believe I've ever shared with you in detail before, perhaps in my previous video about the gentleman referred to as Green Boots, and which I uh told you that I'm frequently in touch with Russell Bryce. For those who don't know who the famous Russell Bryce is, he's been called the godfather of Mount Everest Base Camp. He's launched many, many successful expeditions on the north and the south side, along with his friend Harry Taylor. They were the first individuals to complete the deathly dangerous Three Pinnacles on the Northeast Ridge of Mount Everest. That's another story for a future Everest mystery segment. Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman who disappeared there in 1982. Russell Bryce and Harry Taylor did what many thought might never actually happen. And I emailed Russell and I asked him some questions because I had heard that he had previously sent a team of his Sherpa up to remove the body of Green Boots. And I want to read it verbatim just so you can kind of understand what he encountered up there, his team encountered, and he wrote to me, Yes, we did try to move Green Boots, but indeed he was frozen to the ground, and it was not possible to remove him in a respectful way. And then he goes on to say, I've not been to the north side of Everest since 2007, but I recently heard that Green Boots has since been removed. I have no idea where that is, but I suspect that someone might have put him behind the big rock. And that's where David Sharp was put some years ago out of sight of the climbers. That's very possibly true. As Russell had said, his Sherpa were unable to remove the body respectfully, and that's probably the most important piece of information moving forward because to describe in detail exactly what it means to not be able to remove a body respectfully. At 8,500 meters, a human body that's been in contact with the rock and the ice for all those years, it doesn't simply lie there waiting to be picked up. Imagine uh the fabric of the clothing and the and the plastic of the boots, and even in some places the skin of the body in contact with the snow, snow falling and then slightly thawing and then re freezing over the course of decades, that body literally becomes fused to the surface, and that's why 10, 11 years after Dorje Mora perished in the cave there, that Russell Bryce's Sherpa said it was impossible to remove the body. So, as Russell said, the body became inseparable from the surface, making a recovery out of the question. Now, in discussing how difficult it would be to remove a body frozen into the surface like that, The Guardian did an article recently. They had reviewed the request for bids by the Indian government. I have not actually seen that document, but in so doing, they interviewed Sheering Jiangbu, the founder of Everest Sherpa Expedition, and he's been involved in numerous body recovery expeditions and efforts. And this is almost beyond belief. He says retrieving green boots will not only be arduous and dangerous. Sharing Jiangbu said that an iced-up body in climbing gear could weigh up to 200 kilograms. That's about 400 something pounds. He says that the limbs, frozen solid at awkward angles, make dragging or lowering the corpse down rocky and icy terrain exhausting and treacherous. See this footage from my video about the removal of remains of Gotam Ghosh in 2017. He says that sometimes he concedes, this is what the Guardian says, they must amputate a limb that, quote, we cannot bend, but there is no choice to do another way. I would imagine the family is going to want to sign off on that. That's a total desecration of the body, and I think probably in some respects defeats the whole purpose of the mission in the first place, and hopefully those guidelines of whether to do it or to absolutely not do it are set in place before any bid is accepted. Another exceptional example of this is that in 1999, when our research team discovered the remains of George Mallory at 8,150 or so meters on the north face. The team, granted, was anything but trained in this type of work. But on that first day, on May 1st, on the day of the discovery, it took hours of them chipping the ice away from around on the outside of where Mallory's remains lay. And even then they were unable to actually extricate the body. So if Mallory's remains are anything like what Dorget Morup's remains are like, it's going to take not necessarily hours, but over the course of days at 8,500 meters, that's like a summit trip and back each time that work needs to be done. And then, granted, after that, the fallout from the media and the press, especially for the 99 expedition, was overwhelming. The complete misunderstanding of what it's really like to work and operate in the death zone at altitude is shocking in some respects. So hopefully the Indian government has all aspects covered in that respect. And then there's another layer here. This is on the Tibetan, the north side of the mountain. For any who have been following the ins and outs of the Everest realm, the Chinese Tibetan Mountaineering Association, without an explanation, closed the mountain in the spring of 2026. No foreigners were allowed on the mountain. And now, so this the Indian government or the Tibetan Indo-Tibetan Border Police would need a special permit to get their team up on the mountain. Now that might explain why only Sherpa have been asked for. Perhaps that's an agreement that's previously been made with the Indian government. We'll give you special permission to go up the mountain at that time. I know some people who have been on the mountain in the post-monsoon season. It is very, very snowy. This is going to be an extremely dangerous and expensive operation. I hope the Indian government is ready to shell out a ton of cash, possibly in the realm of a half a million or more dollars for the team of six Sherpa that will require an entire support network in base camp as well, getting their team ropes up into that location to make sure that all safety measures have been exhausted. And so this is where my take comes in. It's not worth a grain of salt to the Indian government, I'm absolutely sure. But the possibility that this is an unsuccessful and expensive expedition, putting many lives in peril, there should be a backup plan. And that backup plan to me would be of the nature of bringing the materials up there that would be, in the case of their failure to remove the body, to cover Dorget more up with a fabric of sorts that would meld into the surface and over time collect snow and ice and permanently cover him from view, after which a memorial stone or cairn would be placed with a special prayer service by a representative from India, so those prayers could be done in the right religion and said in the proper way to bring closure to the family. At that time, those prayers would include the names Sawang Paljar and the third climber who is very infrequently mentioned, Sawang Samanla, also of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. And as a reference to this, the expense of this expedition, I did a story with John Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer from the New York Times, who covered the story about the removal of two bodies of Indian gentlemen in 2017. They perished there along with one of their teammates in 2016. Just for the removal of those individuals, the Indian government was charged $90,000. Now, this was by Seven Summit Treks, and they were already on the mountain. This was just a separate journey up the mountain to remove their bodies to a very easy to locate section below the balcony. Now, this was on the south side of the mountain. So a somewhat simple mission, this one being proposed for the autumn of 2026 is certainly much, much more complicated and much more dangerous than the recovery of that. I'll put a link to my interview with John Branch in the description below, along with links of other videos about the gentleman referred to as Green Boots and other related stories. And so time will tell. I would love to know what you think. Please take a moment to leave your thoughts in the section below. I would love to know what if you think they should try it, if you think they should leave him where he is, or if they should cover him and leave a memorial cairn or stone nearby. And also, if you're still watching and have not subscribed to the channel yet, please just take a moment to subscribe to the channel and also check out all of the exclusive content in the member section. I also have exclusive content on patreon.com slash Everest Mystery. There's also a bunch of free exclusive content over there as well. And be sure to check out our merchandise page at EverestMystery.com. Great hats, shirts, hoodies. You name it, go check that out. There's some really, really good stuff to help support your favorite Everest centric YouTube channel. In the meantime, do a good deed. 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