Kathmandu, May 23 -- Just days after expedition leaders and the government had claimed that overcrowding on Everest was not a worry, two climbers died on Wednesday due to an hours-long 'traffic jam'. A third climber died due to exhaustion on Thursday.

Mountaineering agencies and the government liaison officer at Base Camp had both told the Post on Tuesday that since a fixed climbing timetable had been instituted, overcrowding on the final push to the summit would be unlikely.

However, Anjali S Kulkarni and Kalpana Das, both Indian citizens, and American Donald Lynn Cash both died while descending from the summit. Their deaths were attributed primarily to a long queue of both ascending and descending climbers, forcing many to wait for ho...