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| - For years, internet users have claimed a veteran mountaineer survived climbing Mount Everest multiple times, only to die at home after falling off a ladder while changing a light bulb.
For example, in August 2024, an Instagram user posted (archived) a meme version of the claim consisting of a photo of a man in an orange snowsuit and climbing gear raising his arms in victory, with an inset photo of a man changing a light bulb. Text superimposed on the image read:
Mountaineer Gerard Omel, who made six ascents of Mount Everest, died at home after falling from a ladder while changing a light bulb.
(Instagram user @inspiring_codes)
Posts making variations on the claim and featuring the same photo of a man in an orange snowsuit appeared on social media platforms including X (archived), Facebook (archived), and LinkedIn (archived). The claim also circulated without that specific photo, for example in a 2022 X post (archived) and a 2014 post (archived) on VKontakte, the Russian social media site.
A reverse image search of the photo of the man in the orange snowsuit on TinEye found that the same image appeared on the website of Protect Our Winters, a climate advocacy organization geared toward outdoor sports enthusiasts, alongside a bio of Adrian Ballinger, a climber and professional mountain tour guide. We've reached out to Ballinger for confirmation that he is indeed the man in the photo, and will update this story if and when we hear back.
(protectourwinters.org)
As for the substance of the claim, a Google search for the name "Gerald Omel" returned only further instances of the anecdote, none of which included any concrete evidence a famous mountain climber by that name ever existed.
A search for the details of the claim without the name given in the posts, by contrast, found multiple books sharing the same anecdote as the social media posts. In these instances, however, the man was identified as Gerard Hommel, not Gerard Omel. For example, according to Neil R. Storey's "The Little Book of Death," which was published in 2013:
Distinguished mountaineer Gerard Hommel, a veteran of six Everest expeditions, died after falling off a ladder: he slipped and cracked his head on a sink as he was attempting to change a light bulb in the kitchen of his home in Nantes, France, in 1993.
Searching for the name "Gerard Hommel" on Newspapers.com returned multiple similarly worded examples of the same anecdote, all dated to the mid-1990s. For example, in 1994, an item in the "Daily Break" section of an edition of the Charlotte Observer read:
Strange Death Department: True item: Mountaineer Gerard Hommel, a veteran of six expeditions climbing Mount Everest, died at his home in Nantes, France, when he was trying to replace a light bulb and fell from the ladder, striking his head.
The earliest appearance of the anecdote in print seemed to have been a book titled "The Fortean Times Book of Strange Deaths," which was first published in 1994. As its title suggests, the book consisted of unusual death reports originally compiled in the "Strange Deaths" section of the Fortean Times, a British magazine that largely focuses on paranormal phenomena and conspiracy theories.
The relevant section of that 1994 book read in full:
MOUNTAINEER Gerard Hommel also met his Maker in an ironic fashion. The veteran of six Everest expeditions, Hommel was changing a lightbulb in the kitchen of his home in Nantes, France, in October 1993, when he fell off the ladder. He cracked his head on the sink and died.
The book included no citation for the report, however, and further Google searches for the terms "Gerard Hommel," "Nantes," and "October 1993" returned no reputable coverage of the man's life or death.
In further search of evidence for Hommel's existence, we also consulted the Himalayan Database, a publicly searchable compilation of expedition records for Himalayan mountain peaks, including Mount Everest, starting with the year 1905.
To account for both versions of the alleged mountaineer's last name, we searched the database for all French citizens named "Gerard" known to have ever participated in Everest expeditions. Of the 12 results, none had the last name of "Omel" or "Hommel," and none were recorded to have climbed Everest more than three times, regardless of whether or not they successfully summited.
(The Himalayan Database)
In summary, Snopes found no concrete evidence to support the claim that a mountaineer by the name of Gerard Hommel or Gerard Omel died while changing a light blub — or ever climbed Mount Everest at all, let alone six times.
However, the anecdote about the mountaineer who survived six Mount Everest climbs only to die in his home has circulated in print since at least 1994, and it is possible — if unlikely — that primary-source documentation about the climber's life and death exists somewhere in the world.
As a result, we have rated this claim unproven, meaning we have examined the available evidence but could not arrive at a definitive true or false determination.
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