Climber dies on Mount Everest Thursday

Although he was able to climb out of the crevasse, he died as he headed down through a blizzard to a lower camp for medical care.

According to initial reports from base camp, the climber fell after he left his tent without taking proper safety precautions that are essential at the particularly dangerous Camp III.

Through part of Thursday afternoon (Nepal time), the climber's body remained on the face of Everest, just below Camp III at 23,500 feet. After some discussion, members of the Viesturs expedition at Camp II decided to climb up and retrieve the body.

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"Well a fellow was at...Camp III. Left his tent to go to the bathroom. The cardinal rule at Camp III is you don't leave your tent without crampons and preferably you're tied in to a rope. This fellow neither had crampons nor was he tied into a rope, went out to go to the bathroom, slipped into a crevasse, fell about 20 meters," said Brad Ohlund, a member of the Ed Viesturs expedition, said from base camp.

"Probably what happened is he suffered internal injuries that he either wasn't aware of, or wasn't saying anything about. He decided he would head back down on his own and died along the way.

"Seemed no one else wanted to retrieve his body. Ed [Viesturs] and Robert [Schauer] and David [Breashears], being a little bit more high-minded than that, weren't willing to just leave him laying out there," he said.

After climbing back out of the crevasse, the climber rested in his tent and decided to head to a lower elevation, through a blizzard, for medical treatment.

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"The details are a little bit sketchy at this point. But it appears that what happened was that he came back from his accident, laid down in his tent for a while, and then decided to ... go down to Camp II, it appears, on his own. And then somewhere below Camp III is when he died," Ohlund said.

Ohlund declined to identify the climber or his expedition, saying that specific information would have to come from the leaders of that expedition. He did say that the climber was not a member of Viesturs' team or Scott Fischer's team.

Attempts to reach other expeditions or Nepalese officials have thus far been unsuccessful.

There are many expeditions attempting Mount Everest at this time, including a Yugoslavian team that aborted its effort Thursday afternoon after coming within 30 meters of the summit, as well as expeditions from China, Denmark, and some international teams.

This story written by Outside Online staff