Inside the world’s deadliest all-inclusive trip: How ‘conga line’ queues form on Everest, why guides charge up to $1 million… and the very surprising secret goings-on at base camp

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Everest, Inc.

by Will Cockrell (Gallery Books £20, 352pp)

It’s one of the most startling images ever taken on a mountain: The photo, taken in May 2019, showed a long line of hundreds of climbers stretched out in a line on an icy knife edge just below the summit of Mount Everest.

They all find themselves in what is ominously known as the ‘death zone’, an altitude above 8,000 metres, where the human body quickly begins to shut down due to a catastrophic lack of natural oxygen.

To some observers, the statue represented the ultimate plundering of the singular splendor of the world’s highest mountain, all for commercial gain.

It was a far cry from that historic day in May 1953 when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach Everest, part of a major British expedition that was as tightly organized as a military operation.

Previously, fourteen expeditions had failed to conquer the 29,035-foot summit. Between that first ascent and 1992, only 394 climbers reached the summit.

Between 1992 and 2024, more than 11,500 people performed the same feat, almost all of them clients of a few mountain guiding companies, and all of them paid up to $100,000 (£80,000) for the privilege.

How did that happen? How did the highest place in the world, and one of the most dangerous, become a vacation you could buy, just like a Caribbean cruise?

In this riveting, extensively researched book about the Everest industry, veteran adventure writer Will Cockrell attempts to answer the question. At the same time, he tackles the complex moral issues: if you virtually eliminate danger, are you killing the spirit of adventure? And just because you have $100,000 to play with, should you have the right to purchase such a remarkable personal achievement?

But the fact remains that even as you’re led up the mountain, climbing ladders and hooked onto pre-placed ropes, all the while breathing oxygen from bottles dropped off by your guides along the way, an Everest climb is a powerful test of the heart stays. , fitness and endurance. And it is still a very dangerous place: steep, cold, windswept.

The fact that an industry has developed to get climbers to the top does not eliminate all dangers, as the recent disappearance of 40-year-old British climber Daniel Paterson and his Nepalese guide Pastenji Sherpa, 23, all too tragically illustrates.

Cockrell traces the birth of the guiding industry to a wealthy Texan industrialist named Dick Bass, who devised a plan to climb the highest mountains on all seven continents. At noon on April 30, 1985, Bass summited Everest for the fourth time, accompanied by veteran mountaineer and filmmaker Dave Breashears.

Bass was the 174th person to reach the top of the world and, at 55, the oldest. He knew he was never a ‘real’ climber, and he didn’t want to be one.

Two weeks later, he appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and claimed that normally “the only exercise I get is running through airports to catch a plane.” Millions of average Americans could then say, “So that guy climbed Mount Everest.” I could do that.’

As Cockrell says, Bass “set something in motion that irrevocably changed the way people thought about Everest and mountaineering in general.”

Climbing Everest became a commodity and, led by enterprising and skilled mountaineers, guiding companies began to flood in. The Everest Base Camp, the destination for anyone wanting to attempt the summit on the Nepalese side, is itself a monumental height at 17,600 feet. for most people. It would be unrecognizable today to the early pioneers.

Row after row of tents, neatly arranged like at Glastonbury, are spread over more than a mile of rock and ice. Impressive stone shelters function as food tents, cooking stations and, during intermission, as casinos and saloons.

You can get a good cup of coffee, a fresh croissant and a massage before happy hour, and then maybe an art show, followed by an evening of poker and whiskey.

This was not well received by everyone. Hillary said, “Sitting at base camp and chugging cans of beer doesn’t exactly look like mountain climbing to me. It will be so that you can go to the beach on your holiday – or climb Everest.’

And climber and guide Pet Athans noted, “People still think it’s an adventure: it’s more of an adventure figuring out New York’s subway system.” But for Cockrell, the climbers who bring the guides up don’t spoil the mountain, they share it. They may be inexperienced, but they are there for as good a reason as anyone else. Reaching the top is a huge challenge, no matter how much help you get.

The infamous ‘conga line’ photo was taken by a Nepalese mountaineer named Nirmal Purja, known as Nims and the most famous climber in the world.

Nims is now the figurehead of Nepal’s success on Everest. Born in 1983, Nims joined the Gurkhas at the age of 20 and was later accepted into the Navy’s Special Boat Service, a unit similar to the US Navy SEALs. So he is, you might say, a tough guy.

When he turned to climbing, he climbed three 8,000-meter peaks in five days: Everest, Lhotse and Makalu. In 2018 he announced that he would climb all 8,000 meter peaks in seven months, while the previous record was more than seven years old.

Nims reached all fourteen peaks in just over six months. It was a monumental achievement, but also a tribute to his organizational skills, with an abundance of oxygen, dozens of climbers to determine the routes and a helicopter to get to the next base camp as quickly as possible.

As his profile skyrocketed, he secured book and film deals and founded a leading company, Elite Exped. He can charge $1 million for personal one-on-one guidance, which he reportedly charged Qatar’s Princess Asma Al Thani for taking her to the summit of Everest in 2022. I’m sure she could afford it.

Nims is not to everyone’s taste – for some he is too selfish, an empire builder – but he is the face of the new Nepalese leaders who dominate Everest and the Himalayan climbing industry.

The largest companies working on the mountain are now owned, staffed and managed by Nepalis. And if a fortune is to be made from wealthy climbers who want to experience the roof of the world, then it is preferable that the money goes mainly to the people who live there.

This is largely Cockrell’s view in this fascinating book, and if you approve of wealth creation (as I do), then what happens on Everest is largely a good thing. I just wish he was a little less excited about it.

As Venice is not alone in discovering this, tourism can be harmful – even heavy adventure tourism – and the beauty of the world’s wild places must be cared for. When exploration and adventure become too easy and too safe, a fundamental part of what it means to be human is lost.