But the shocking reality is there’s really very little you can do. The air is so thin that even with supplemental oxygen every minute that you spend above 26,000 feet – in what’s known as the Death Zone – you’re basically dying. The human brain becomes confused and even small movements require Herculean efforts.

As the movie trailer puts it: “Human beings simply aren’t built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747.” Recovering a body requires a lot of effort, not to mention risk, and so most of the time they’re just left there.

Three of the members of the six-man summit team from the Indo-Tibetan border police expedition decided to turn back as the weather closed in on May 10th, but Tsewang Samanla, Dorje Morup and Paljor pressed on.

“None of the three was seen alive again.”

A Japanese team coming back from the summit passed unidentified climbers who may have been Samanla, Morup and Paljor on the way up and the climbers’ Indian colleagues saw what they believed to be the men’s headlights trying to descend later that evening. But none of the three were seen alive again.

Green boots’ body has become a landmark, seen by every climber attempting the North East Ridge route to the summit.

Mountaineering & Expeditions – Mpora

Neither Francys nor Sergei made it back to camp that night. The following morning, climbers Ian Woodall, Cathy O’Dowd and their team were amazed to find what they’d thought was a body still alive. “Don’t leave me,” Francys Arsentiev murmured to O’Dowd. But immobile and slipping in and out of consciousness, she was already beyond rescuing.

After spending nearly an hour with her in temperatures of minus 30, Woodall and O’Dowd were forced to turn around. In her book Just for the Love of It, O’Dowd writes: “I had never encountered anything like this. I had passed bodies, I had had friends not come back, but I had never watched anyone die. Nor had I had to decide to leave them.”

Of Sergei, they had seen nothing but it later emerged he’d fallen to his death trying to reach his wife. Like green boots, Francys Arsentiev’ body lay right next to main North Col route for years, passed by hundreds of climbers going to and from the summit.

David Sharp

Like Francys and Sergei, David Sharp was climbing Mt Everest without a support team and without the aid of bottled oxygen. It’s believed he made it to the summit on May 14th 2006, but on his way down fatigued and confused he stopped and sat down in what, since 1996, has been known as “green boots cave”.

Around 40 climbers from several expeditions are reckoned to have passed Sharp on their way up the mountain on the 15th. Kiwi double amputee Mark Inglis’ climbing party stopped and realised Sharp was in trouble. Yet no significant attempt was made to rescue him until the climbers passed him again on the way down some nine hours later.

“They don’t give a damn for anybody else.”

By this point Sharp was beyond help, and he died frozen in the position he’d sat down in, arms huddled around his knees.

He added: “I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mt Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top.

“They don’t give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn’t impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.”

George Mallory

One of the oldest bodies on the mountain wasn’t discovered until 1999 – nearly 75 years after he died. George Leigh Mallory was the most famous mountaineer of his time – and arguably of any time.

To this day, no-one is sure whether he and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine reached the summit of the mountain on 8th June 1924. They were climbing dressed in tweed, using incredibly primitive equipment by today’s standards, including very clunky oxygen bottles. And yet when they were last sighted, they were just a few hundred vertical feet short of the summit and, according to fellow expedition member Noel Odell, “going strongly for the top.”

“when they were last sighted, they were just a few hundred vertical feet short of the summit and apparently climbing well.”

Neither man returned however, and the question of whether or not they made it remains one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries. An expedition was launched in 1999 to try and find Mallory’s body and perhaps solve the issue.

Yet when they found Mallory his mummified corpse revealed little. He appears to have fallen to his death and from the rope injury around his waist it has been deduced that he and Irvine were still roped together when they fell.

However the main hope of the 1999 expedition, that they would find the camera Mallory and Irvine carried and conclusive photographic evidence either way, was dashed. The Vest Pocket Kodak was nowhere to be found.

When asked why he wanted to climb the (as then unconquered) mount Everest, Mallory famously replied: “Because it’s there”. Whether or not that is a reason worth dying for is open for debate. But it’s one that has driven thousands of climbers to follow in his footsteps ever since – with many, like Mallory, failing to return.

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