Dorje Morup, “Green Boots,” to be recovered from Everest

Reported by CNN Travel. The Indian climber known for decades as “Green Boots” now has a name: Dorje Morup. India plans to bring his body down from Mount Everest, likely during the April-May 2027 season.

Morup was 47 and served in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. He died in the May 1996 storm that killed eight climbers, the disaster behind Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air.” Morup was on the mountain’s north side, attempting the harder route from Tibet. He and two other Indian climbers, Tsewang Paljor and Tsewang Smanla, radioed that they had summited before the storm closed in. Paljor is believed to have fallen and was never found. Smanla disappeared above the Second Step. Morup got partway down and died in a small limestone cave below the First Step. His green Koflach boots stayed visible, and climbers used them as a route marker. For decades, he was simply “Green Boots.”

Last year, a small Sherpa team quietly climbed to the body and took DNA samples from hair and nails, according to CNN Travel. A lab in India confirmed the samples were Morup’s. Dawa Steven Sherpa, whose company Asian Trekking outfitted the 1996 expedition, said the team worked fast because it was using bottled oxygen.

“People knew ‘Green Boots’ as a landmark, but they didn’t know the person behind that title,” Dawa Steven Sherpa told CNN.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police is now looking for an elite Sherpa team to make the recovery. An agency official told CNN the mission is expected in the April-May 2027 climbing season, once approvals and clearances are in place. “We felt that any brave ITBP mountaineer should be given a dignified farewell,” the official said.

The work will be hard. The body sits about 300 meters below the summit, in the death zone, and has been frozen for 30 years. Helicopters cannot fly safely at that altitude, and earlier high-altitude recovery attempts have been called off because of the danger. Dawa said about eight Sherpas could manage the descent with foam padding and a specialized stretcher, dragging the body over rocks and ice. A frozen limb could break if it catches on something.

There are diplomatic hurdles, too. China closed Everest’s north side, in Tibet, to foreign climbers this year, and India and China remain at odds over the Himalayan border. It is unclear whether any company will bid on the job.

For generations, Morup’s body was a checkpoint on the way up. David Roeske, an American climber who summited in 2013 and 2016, said passing the body felt like honoring Morup. If the mission works, that landmark disappears, and the man behind the nickname comes home. Dawa said bringing a body down gives families closure and humanizes the person again.

• 1996 Everest disaster
• body recovery
• Dorje Morup
• Green Boots
• Indo-Tibetan Border Police
• Mount Everest