Another mountaineer has died after summiting Mount Everest, bringing the death toll for the 2019 climbing season to 11 people. American attorney Christopher John Kulish, 62, died on Monday after reaching the top of Everest on the Nepalese side of the mountain in the morning, Meera Acharya, the Director of Nepal's Tourism Department told CNN.

Mountaineers have suggested difficult weather conditions, a lack of experience and the growing commercialization of expeditions as contributing factors to the backlog. British climber Robin Haynes Fisher was one of those who had warned of the dangers of overcrowding.

"With a single route to the summit, delays caused by overcrowding could prove fatal so I am hopeful my decision to go for the 25th will mean fewer people. Unless of course everyone else plays the same waiting game," he wrote in a captioned Instagram post on May 19.

He died after suffering from what appeared to be altitude sickness at 8,600 meters (28,215 feet), while returning from the summit on Saturday.

During the week beginning May 20, crowds of climbers became stuck in a queue to the summit, above the mountain's highest camp at 8,000 meters (26,247 feet). The summit of Mount Everest is 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) high.

Most people can only spend a matter of minutes at the summit without extra oxygen supplies, and the area where mountaineers have been delayed is known to many as the "death zone."

Mountain guide Adrian Ballinger told CNN many see Everest as the "ultimate challenge" but the problem he has seen is the "lower level of experience of the climbers trying to come here and also of the companies that are trying to offer services on the mountain."

He continued, "That lack of experience, both with the commercial operators and the climbers themselves, is causing these images we see where people make bad decisions, get themselves in trouble up high and end up having unnecessary fatalities."

Ballinger explained that seasoned climbers call any part of the mountain above 26,000 feet "the death zone," adding that "humans just really aren't meant to exist there."

"Even when using bottled oxygen, supplemental oxygen, there's only a very few number of hours that we can actually survive up there before our bodies start to shut down. So that means if you get caught in a traffic jam above 26,000 feet ... the consequences can be really severe," he added.

An experienced mountaineer has described the “death, carnage and chaos” at the top of Mount Everest as climbers pushed past bodies to reach the world’s highest summit.

The death toll on the mountain grew to 11 in the past day after an American doctor was killed while descending from the peak. It emerged also that an Australian climber was discovered unconscious but had survived after being transported downhill on the back of a yak.

Elia Saikaly, a film-maker, reached Hillary Step, the final stage before the summit, on the morning of 23 May, where he said the sunrise revealed the lifeless body of another climber. With little choice at that altitude but to keep moving, his team – including Joyce Azzam, the first Lebanese woman to climb the world’s “Seven Summits” – made it to the peak a short time later.

“I cannot believe what I saw up there,” Saikaly said of the last hours of his climb in a post on Instagram. “Death. Carnage. Chaos. Lineups. Dead bodies on the route and in tents at camp 4. People who I tried to turn back who ended up dying. People being dragged down. Walking over bodies. Everything you read in the sensational headlines all played out on our summit night.”

This year’s Everest climbing season is so far the fourth deadliest on record, with mountaineers blaming poor weather, inexperienced climbers and a record number of permits issued by the Nepalese government, which, along with a rule that every climber has to be accompanied by a sherpa, led to there being more than 820 people trying to reach the summit.

“There were 200-plus climbers making their way to the summit,” Saikaly told the Guardian of his ascent. “I came across a deceased climber … that person’s body was fixed to an anchor point between two safety lines and every single person that was climbing towards the summit had to step over that human being.

if climbers want to summit Mount Everest, the tallest peak in the world at 29,029 feet (8,848 meters or 5.5 miles) above sea level, they have to brave what's known as "The Death Zone" — the altitude above 8,000 meters where there is so little oxygen that the body starts to die, minute by minute and cell by cell.

Had Jeffrey Epstein, inmate #76318-054, still been on suicide watch at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, regulations would have required him to remain under constant observation by trained “companion” inmates.

“They must be mature, reliable individuals who have credibility with both staff and inmates,” the regulations say of the companions, who are paid prison wages and rotate around the clock in shifts of no more than five hours so as to stay alert.

Regulations also would have required Epstein to be housed in a “suicide prevention room,” which “may not have fixtures or architectural features that would easily allow self-injury.”

[...] on July 29—six days after the incident that led to his placement on suicide watch and seems in hindsight to have more likely been an actual attempt to take his own life rather than a stunt resulting only in minor bruises around the neck—Epstein was deemed to be “no longer at imminent risk for suicide.”

[...]

Epstein was returned from the suicide prevention room to the Special Housing Unit, where he had been found lying prone on the floor of his cell last month. The SHU doubles as a discipline unit and as a refuge for inmates who fear for their safety in the general population, as Epstein reportedly did.

One difference for Epstein upon his return was the absence of a cellmate such as Nicholas Tartaglione, a ex-cop turned accused quadruple murderer. Tartaglione claims to have saved Epstein during the earlier possible attempt.

And there were no more inmate companions keeping watch.

Epstein was with just Epstein in a cell whose architectural priority was more security than suicide prevention.

A man who had acted in the outside world as if the rules did not apply to him was now left without the protection of prison rules that had been promulgated over the years to prevent incidents such as the suicide of mobster Louis Turra in 1980.

Attorney General William Barr—whose father had hired Epstein to teach math at the tony private school Dalton in the late 70s—said in a statement Saturday morning: “I was appalled to learn that Jeffrey Epstein was found dead early this morning from an apparent suicide while in federal custody. Mr. Epstein’s death raises serious questions that must be answered. In addition to the FBI’s investigation, I have consulted with the Inspector General who is opening an investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Epstein’s death."

Southern District U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement Saturday afternoon that “Today's events are disturbing, and we are deeply aware of their potential to present yet another hurdle to giving Epstein's many victims their day in Court.” He pointedly noted that “our investigation of the conduct charged in the indictment — which included a conspiracy count — remains ongoing.”