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CNN: Mount Everest death toll rises to 11 amid overcrowding concerns

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.