How Everest’s Green Boots will be recovered in gruelling mission as identity solved 30 years on

The identity of the climber known as Green Boots, who died on Mount Everest 30 years ago, has finally been revealed, and his body is due to be recovered from the mountain in a full operation that is going to be logistically incredibly difficult.

He tragically died on 10th May 1996 in a catastrophic blizzard on the Northeast Ridge of Mount Everest, and his body became a heartbreaking landmark for other climbers in Everest’s dangerous “death zone,” 8,000 metres up, where there is a lack of oxygen.

Nobody knew who the body belonged to, and the unidentified male climber became known as Green Boots because he was wearing bright green boots when he sadly passed.

For decades, other climbers had to walk past his body when climbing to the peak through the Northeast ridge route. He was moved off the main path in 2014, and his body was covered with rocks in 2017.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Mount Everest’s Green Boots has been identified after three decades

30 years after his passing, Green Boots has been identified as 47-year-old Indian climber Dorje Morup following DNA testing by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). He was part of the group of Indian people to ever ascend Everest from its northern face through Tibet, one of the mountain’s most challenging routes.

When a huge storm hit the mountain during their climb on 10th May 1996, five climbers from the group lost their lives. Lots of the climbers turned back after the tragedy, but Morup continued to the summit alongside two others, Tsewang Paljor, 28, and Tsewang Samanla, 38.

All three of them passed away in the storm, meaning eight people died in total that day. For years, people wrongly thought Green Boots was Paljor because reports at the time said he was wearing green boots.

Dorje Morup. Credit: Indo-Tibetan Border Police

Dorje Morup’s body will be recovered in a gruelling mission

Most Read

Bonnie Blue reveals the sheer number of men she’s slept with while pregnant and I feel sick

What child model branded ‘most beautiful girl in the world’ is doing now as she gets married

A rundown of who from Love Island 2026 was scouted, and who applied to be on the show

After revealing his identity, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police issued a government tender seeking a team to retrieve Green Boots’ body from the mountain by October. The operation will take place between June and September this year, where a team of at least six skilled Sherpas will have to enter the death zone to recover and transport Morup’s body down the mountain.

Teams are currently bidding to complete the retrieval. To qualify, bidders need to have done at least one successful rescue operation at an altitude of over 8,000 metres in the past five years, preferably on Everest, The Times revealed.

Green Boots is on Everest’s Tibetan side, where access is controlled by Chinese authorities and climbing permits are regulated, so it will also be the winning bidder’s responsibility to secure permission from Chinese authorities, arrange transportation across the Tibet-Nepal border, fly the body to Kathmandu and repatriate the body to India.

Credit: Peter Giovannini/imageBROKER/Shutterstock

The team must also “use appropriate preservation techniques for handling of the dead body that has been lying for decades in sub-zero conditions, to ensure respectful and safe handling”.

In the spring 2026 climbing season, China closed the mountain to foreign climbers, so gaining permission from Chinese officials may be difficult.

“It is not impossible to retrieve the body from Everest, but the first challenge is getting permission from the Chinese officials and then only can they proceed to bring the body down,” Pemba Sherpa, founder of the Kathmandu-based Xtreme Climbers Treks and Expedition, told ABC News.

The team of Sherpas will need good weather to allow them to climb the mountain, and it will be an extremely difficult mission. Helicopters can’t land at that altitude, so the climbers will have to carry the frozen body with their own hands down life-threatening steep slopes, with risks of avalanches, storms, falls and little oxygen.

For more, like The Tab on Facebook.

Featured image credit: Peter Giovannini/imageBROKER/Shutterstock and Wikimedia Commons