British climber finds body of his friend at Everest summit
A British man who climbed Everest found the body of his friend who had died just hours after conquering the summit only months before.
Rodney Hogg saw the body of his climbing friend Peter Kinloch on a ledge 1,000ft below the peak as he neared the summit.
Mr Kinloch, 28, had been attempting the Seven Summits Challenge last year, in which climbers attempt to conquer the highest peak of each continent.
But as he descended from the peak of Everest the Scots-born climber got into difficulty in bad weather conditions and died of frostbite and exhaustion.
Fellow climbers in his party said Kinloch, an IT specialist with Merseyside Police, suffered snow blindess and lost co-ordination before collapsing.
Three Nepalese Sherpas spent hours trying to resuscitate the climber but were forced to abandon his body on the mountain.
Mr Hogg, 44, told the Mirror: 'When I saw him I instantly knew it was Peter. You could see his face. It was like he was lying on his back taking a rest.'
The BBC employee was raising money for Children In Need and had the charity's mascot Pudsey Bear with him as he climbed the peak in May with a 10-man team.
'It was too dangerous to climb down to get closer to him so I had an emotional moment up there to pay my respects,' said Mr Hogg.
Mr Kinloch's parents had asked their son's friend to bring back the dead man's camera if found as it contained the last pictures of their son, including his happiness at achieving the summit of Everest, but it was not possible to retrieve the camera.
Mr Hogg explained that the Sherpas had clipped his friend to a fixed line on the mountainside before he died, which means his body is likely to remain there forever unless he is cut free.
Experts believe Everest holds the bodies of at least 200 climbers who have died in their attempts to scale the mountain.
The mountain is five-and-a-half miles above sea level, with an exact height of 29,029ft, and straddles the border of Nepal and Tibet in the Himalayas.
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