Guides, climbers prepare to leave Everest

Scores of Nepalese guides and foreign climbers on Mount Everest packed up Thursday, loading supplies onto yaks and booking helicopters, with the climbing season increasingly in doubt after an avalanche killed 16 people last week. Expeditions prepared to leave shortly after crisis talks ended with the Nepal government at Everest base camp in the wake of last Friday's worst ever accident on the world's highest peak. With sherpa guides threatening to boycott the season, officials promised several hundred of them and foreign mountaineers during the talks that their climbing permits would be extended for five years, in a bid to lure the frustrated climbers back to the country in future, according to AFP.