More than 300 people have perished while climbing Mount Everest, but Marco Siffredi was the only one to disappear while descending the slopes on a snowboard.
Siffredi was a French adventurer who skied and snowboarded in the Chamonix Valley and the mountains of Peru.
In 2001, he successfully snowboarded down Mount Everest. The next year, he decided to do it again, ignoring the Sherpas’ warnings about the weather.
After that, he was never seen again. To this day, Siffredi’s body has not been found, and no one really knows what happened to him.
Marco Siffredi was born on May 22, 1979, in Chamonix, France. His father was a mountain guide, so he was no stranger to the slopes.
Siffredi and his brother Pierre both developed a passion for mountains. They also both died doing what they loved.
Several years before Siffredi went missing on Everest, Pierre died in an avalanche while climbing the mountains of Chamonix.
Growing up, it was clear that Siffredi had a talent for skiing and snowboarding. In May 1996, he tackled a difficult route called the Mallory, located on the north face of the Aiguille du Midi. That same year, he also completed the first snowboard descent of the Chardonnet.
Siffredi returned to Chamonix in June 1999 and became the second person to descend the Nant Blanc on Aiguille Verte. This major accomplishment drove him to take on more extreme slopes.
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In May 2001, he climbed Everest’s peak for the first time to find the “Holy Grail” of snowboarding routes, which was the Hornbein Couloir on the northern face of the mountain.
To his disappointment, the Hornbein did not have enough snow covering it, so he had to go with a different route, the Norton Couloir.
It took him two hours to make it all the way down. It was the first time that anyone had ever snowboarded down Everest. However, Siffredi vowed that it wouldn’t be his last.
On September 8, 2002, he made his second attempt to snowboard down the mountain. He was 23 years old at the time.
As it was fall, the snow was very deep. It took 12 and a half hours for Siffredi and the three Sherpas accompanying him to reach the Death Zone.
By the time he was ready to snowboard down Hornbein Couloir, it was already three in the afternoon, and clouds had started to gather below them.
The Sherpas advised him not to snowboard down the mountain due to the weather and the late hour, but Siffredi was determined to take his chance.
As Siffredi glided away, the Sherpas rushed to descend the summit. During their journey, they saw a lone figure about 4,000 feet below them.
The figure stood and slid down the mountain. But when they arrived at the place where they saw the man, there were no tracks in the snow.
The Sherpas concluded that Siffredi was dead and the man they had seen was an apparition. Once they heard that Siffredi never returned from his snowboarding trip, their fears were confirmed.
Experts believe that Siffredi could have collapsed from exhaustion during his descent. He might’ve also fallen into a ravine or was a victim of an avalanche.