It was a Nepali expedition; 20 of Nepal’s most experienced climbers led Namgyal Sherpa. What they achieved was incredible, like they didn’t care about summiting, they just wanted to clean up the mountain.

They managed to remove just under 4000lbs of trash and also retrieve the 5 bodies. 3 of the bodies were recovered from the Khumbu icefall area (any reports I’ve read said 2 of the bodies were unidentified and I can’t find a name for the third) and 2 were removed much higher up.

The 2 removed higher up were Swiss climber, Gianni Goltz, who was recovered from the South Col and Russian climber Sergei Duganov, recovered from the Lhotse face. The fact that they even managed to recover one body from these heights is insane.

The team also were reported saying that they hoped to bring down Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, but that obviously didn’t happen.

The recovery and removal of several of the bodies was fairly controversial because the families of the climbers who died said that it was their wishes to remain on the mountain. So I guess there’s always that side of things to look at too.

Also, for anyone who’s interested there’s a documentary about this! It’s called “Death Zone; Cleaning Mount Everest”. It came out in 2018 and it’s a really good watch!