KATHMANDU:  An American climber who died on Mt Everest on Sunday morning has been identified as Roland Yearwood from Alabama, USA.

According to Murari Sharma, Managing Director at Everest Parivar Treks, Roland Yearwood, 51, died near balcony area at 8,000 m while trying to scale the world’s highest peak.

The Georgiana physician, who headed to the Tibetan side to attempt to climb Mt Everest in 2015, was one of the survivors on the mountain when a devastating earthquake struck Nepal killing nearly 9, 000 people. The climber was part of the SummitClimb Everest Expedition led by renowned climber Daniel Mazur.

Georgiana Medical Center on its webpage stated that Yearwood was in a mission to climb the tallest summit on the seven continents while he liked to spend his spare time to sail, dive and fly. “After completing hospital training in London and New York City Yearwood moved to Southern Alabama where he has been providing primary care for the last 20 years,” it said, adding that he is married to fellow physician and has two daughters enrolled in college.

Sharma said that the base camp manager also sent two Sherpa climbers to the incident site to reconfirm the death of American climber this afternoon.