Most people would think Mount Everest is the most dangerous mountain in the world, but the answer is actually an 8,091 metre high mountain located in north central Nepal called Annapurna.
More people have died on other mountains such as Everest, but this is due to the popularity of climbing such a mountain, in terms of how likely you are to die climbing as a percentage then Annapurna holds the record at 34%. If you tried to climb it with two of your friends, then one of you would die before making it back down to the bottom.
The reason its so deadly is for the same reasons any mountain can be deadly, its just on Annapurna these problems are much more extreme.
1) Climb Difficulty
Something that climbers have to keep in mind is their oxygen supply when at high altitudes. The air is much thinner near the top and so climbers take their own oxygen tanks with them, which are often quite heavy. Because they can only carry a certain amount of weight that means there is a limited amount of air for them, and so gives them a time frame in which they have to make the top and get back to a certain point.
The terrain around the summit of Annapurna is especially hard to climb, and takes much longer to manoeuvre over than other mountains such as Everest. Because of this people often get cut off near the top when their oxygen runs out, leading them to faint and freeze to death.
2) Avalanches
This mountain is particularly prone to avalanches, and has hundreds of them each year. There can be several avalanches everyday which happen at various points around the mountain, meaning people who are climbing it often have to “hope” that the area their crossing that’s known to be an avalanche hot spot isn’t going to start moving while their in its path.
Anyone climbing this mountain will be forced to pass through avalanche areas, and since they can be unpredictable the chance of not dying while moving through the path of a possible ice flow is normally down to pure luck.
3) Help
Due to Annapurna’s location and how isolated it is, there’s next to no one who lives close to the peak. This combined with the weather and how dangerous the area is to fly, means if you get stuck and manage to radio for help, you can be told that no one is coming to get to you for several days.
4) The weather
Weather up any mountain tall enough can change in an instant, but for some reason the weather around Annapurna tends to be much more extreme than most. One of the explanations is due to the two countries the mountain borders, with Tibet to the north and India to the south. The hot Indian weather blasts against the mountain and cools rapidly causing intense cold swells which trigger storms and blizzards. The weather can change much faster along this mountain range and so makes those weather fluctuations even more deadly.
So How Dangerous really is Annapurna
As of 2012, 191 people have successfully made it to the summit and lived to tell the tale. 52 people have died on the way up and 9 have died on the way down, giving the mountain a ratio of 34 deaths per 100 attempts. In recent years this number has dropped to as low as 20 per 100, most likely due to advances in climbing technology.