Kalpana Dash

Kalpana Dash (କଳ୍ପନା ଦାଶ; 7 July 1966 – 23 May 2019) was an Indian lawyer and mountaineer.

She was the first Odia mountaineer to scale Mount Everest.

She had attempted to climb Mount Everest twice before, once in 2004 and once in 2006, but failed due to bad weather and health conditions.

She scaled Mount Everest on 21 May 2008, along with a team of five members from the United States, Canada and Nepal.

On 23 May 2019, Dash again summited Everest with two others, but became ill on the descent and died just above the balcony of Mount Everest.

The cause of her death was the unusual congestion near the summit of Mount Everest because of a narrow climbing window made narrower by severe weather conditions and the Nepal government issuing permits to several hundred climbers.

At least 11 climbers — many of them veteran mountain climbers like Dash — from Nepal, Europe, United States and India died during the 2019 climbing season in April and May 2019.

Donald Cash from Utah in the United States and Anjali Kulkarni from India were among those who died in the same week as Dash.

Her body was recovered by Sherpas and brought to India.