The drones used this year on Everest have not flown for the last four days. One of them was rumored to have crashed, but the facts are not so dramatic.
“Our drone’s emergency parachute got auto-deployed at 6,000m due to a gust of high wind, so it landed near Camp 1,” engineer Raj Bikram Maharjan of Airlift Technology, the Nepal-based company in charge of operating the drones, told ExplorersWeb from Base Camp.
“It didn’t crash, but one of the drone’s arms broke on landing,” he explained.
The accident took place four days ago, when high winds hit Everest and the progress of climbers and rope fixers ceased. Since then, the pilots have paused the drone flights while they investigate exactly what happened. “We’ll get the full details when we check the flight logs,” Maharjan explained.
Can drones fall on climbers’ heads?
The introduction of drones, which were tested last year on Everest for the first time, was unanimously popular among the Sherpa workers, but it also raised some questions about the safety of those below. These are not little personal drones but 30km behemoths loaded with rubbish or gear. The prospect of one of them spiraling out of control toward a line of climbers in the Khumbu Icefall has crossed the mind of some of our readers. Luckily, the team operating the drones took steps to avoid that possibility.
“We have set the drone’s flight path away from the climbers’ route, so that if any accident happens, it will harm no one,” said Maharjan.
The drones also have several safety features, including the emergency parachute that deployed earlier this week.
