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A record 274 people reached Mt Everest’s summit from Nepal side on Wednesday after a delayed spring season forced expeditions to fit their final attempts into a narrow spell of clear weather, making it the busiest single-day ever on the mountain’s southern route and putting fresh focus on crowding above 8,000 metres, where even brief delays can turn fatal, reports Vishant Agarwala. Of the total,150 are Sherpas and high-altitude workers while 124 are climbers. Three Indians — Tulasi Reddy Palpunoori, Sandeep Are and Ajay Pal Singh Dhaliwal — were among those who reached the 8,848.86-metre peak during the record push. Tulasi is from Bowrampet village in Quthbullapur mandal, Hyderabad, and had prepared for Everest through endurance events and climbs such as Elbrus, Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro and Lobuche East.Ecuador climber summits sans guide support Details of Are and Dhaliwal’s home states could not be confirmed. Ecuador’s Marcelo Segovia stood out in Wednesday’s summit wave as the only climber reported to have summited without bottled oxygen or support from guides. Nepal had issued 494 Everest permits this spring. Rishi Ram Bhandari, general secretary of Expedition Operators Association Nepal, said, “This is the highest number of climbers in a single day so far.” The previous Nepal-side record was 223 climbers, set on May on Everest because the death zone, above 8,000 metres, has so little oxygen that the body cannot recover. Mingma G, manager of Imagine Nepal, had flagged heavy movement on the upper route after seeing a long line of climbers on the Lhotse Face. “Imagine this on summit day if we get only one or two weather windows,” he wrote, warning that delayed rope-fixing would squeeze climbers into the same narrow spell of clear weather. That is what played out on Wednesday, when teams waiting at higher camps and climbers moving up from below converged above Camp IV.
