Everest: spoke the photographer who recorded the fatal bottleneck

the picture of Nepalese climber nirmal purja / afp

Nirmal Purja, the Nepalese mountaineer who took the picture of Everest cluttered with mountaineers who became viral in recent days, has referred to the moment when he took the l '. image in the middle of a "choke throttle" of mountaineers never seen before that took the lives of 11 people on May 22 last.

Purja recounted how he managed to obtain the precious image that showed that more than 200 people could not move forward, a deadly trap that would soon become a tragedy.

"I was going down." Suddenly, I got up, unable to move.More than 200 people were trying to climb, I looked around and took the picture, I took off my gloves, my hands were frozen and my fingers numb, but I wanted to take the photo as evidence of what was happening.Of course, I was worried when I saw this gigantic tail.The wind was about 35 km / h "If there had been five more kilometers, there would have been more deaths that day," said the Nepalese mountaineer.

"Everyone wanted to go up and everyone wanted to get off, what I did was stop and control the traffic, I was sending people up and down continuously," he said. said Purja.