Everest's Green Boots Identified as Dorje Morup: The Documentary

The cave below the First Step

For about thirty years, climbers on Everest's north side have passed a small limestone overhang beside the route, just below the First Step at roughly 8,500 metres. A climber who died in the May 1996 storm lies there. He was known by his bright green mountaineering boots, and climbers radioed "Green Boots" as a position report. Most accounts said he was Tsewang Paljor, but that was an assumption nobody had proved.

Three men from Ladakh, May 1996

In spring 1996 a team from India's Indo-Tibetan Border Police tried to climb Everest from Tibet. On 10 May six climbers left Camp 6 around 8 a.m., hours after their planned start. Three turned back; three Ladakhi soldiers kept going: Subedar Tsewang Smanla, Head Constable Tsewang Paljor, who had just turned 28, and Lance Naik Dorje Morup, in his late forties, from the village of Skurbuchan. In the early evening they radioed that they were on top. India and China credit the summit; others believe they stopped about 150 metres short.

A storm arrived at around 7 p.m. The same weather killed five people on the Nepal side, the disaster Jon Krakauer wrote about in Into Thin Air, and eight people died on Everest on 10 and 11 May. What happened on the ridge on 11 May, when a Japanese team passed the Indian climbers, is still argued over. In June 1996 India's border police accepted the Japanese team's account.

A name, thirty years later

In June 2026 The Tribune reported a border-police tender to bring a climber down from Everest's north side. It named him as Lance Naik Dorje Morup. How that identification was made is disputed. An official told CNN it rested on records, surviving teammates and "technical inputs"; CNN reports that samples collected by Sherpas were matched by a lab in India; another official told the BBC he was identified by his clothing and gear, with DNA testing to follow once he is brought down. No result has been published.

Morup's son, Phunchok Dorjai, told Climbing magazine the family gave DNA samples but were never formally told a result. The family hope to hold a funeral near the Martyrs' Park in Leh. The recovery, planned for June to September 2026, did not take place; in October an Indian official told CNN it is now expected in spring 2027. China closed the north side to foreign climbers in 2026. In 2023 the border police had already named a Ladakh peak after the three men: Smanla Paljor Morup Peak.

Why so many stay on the mountain

According to the Himalayan Database, 339 people died on Everest between 1922 and the end of 2025, and five more died in spring 2026. Near the summit the air holds about a third of the oxygen found at sea level, and in 2024 Nepal's army put the cost of each recovery at US$75,000 to 80,000. Recoveries can also cost lives: in 1984 two men fell to their deaths trying to bring down Hannelore Schmatz. Some families have asked that their relatives stay where they fell.

What is and isn't known

The evidence behind the identification has not been released. Whether the 1996 team reached the summit is disputed, and accounts of 11 May conflict. The figure of about 200 people still on Everest is a 2015 estimate, and no official count exists. The film does not show the remains of anyone who died on the mountain.