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There is no evidence to confirm the death of Mountaineer Gerard Omel while changing a lightbulb or that he climbed Mount Everest six times

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A post going viral on social media (here, here, and here) claims to show a photo of mountaineer Gerard Omel in an orange snowsuit who died while changing a light bulb. The post claims that Omel, who made six ascents of Mount Everest, died after falling from a ladder while changing a light bulb at home. Let’s verify the claim through this article.

The archived post can be found here.

Claim: Photo of Gerard Omel, a mountaineer who climbed Mount Everest six times, died after falling from a ladder while changing a light bulb at home.

Fact: The man in the viral image is Adrian Ballinger, head guide of Alpenglow Expeditions. There is no evidence that Gerard Omel died by changing a lightbulb or had climbed Everest six times. A search of the High Adventure Expeditions website for Everest climbers as of December 2023 found no records for Gerard Omel. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.

A Google lens search of the screenshot of the viral image led us to the same photo on the Protect Our Winters website, linked to a bio of Adrian Ballinger, head guide of Alpenglow Expeditions. Adrian, with 15 years of guiding experience, is the only American to ski two 8,000-meter peaks and the first to ski Manaslu. He has led over 100 international expeditions and plans to guide in the Himalayas, South America, Alaska, and Squaw Valley.

A Google keyword search for the name “Gerard Omel” led us to several books, including Neil R. Storey’s The Little Book of Death (2013), which talks about a man Gerard Hommel, a mountaineer who reportedly died in 1993 in Nantes, France, after falling from a ladder. Similar stories appeared in a 1994 Charlotte Observer article but no credible sources confirm his life or death.

To verify the existence of Gerard Hommel or Gerard Omel, we searched on the High Adventure Expeditions website for the full list of Mount Everest climbers as of December 2023. However, no records matching the names “Hommel” or “Omel” were found.

To sum up, there is no evidence that mountaineer Gerard Omel died by changing a lightbulb or had climbed Mount Everest six times.

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