Even after 69 years of its first summit, Everest still has a hold on climbers everywhere in the world. I have worked in the Everest industry since I was 15 -as a porter, cook, support guide and now as an IFMGA mountain guide.
I have grown up with Everest, and witnessed so many changes over the years. I began to document these changes since 2017 when I started photography.
Journey to Base Camp
For typical visitors to the Everest area, base camp is their final stop. But for mountaineers, it is just the beginning of their journey.
This is the sprawling Everest base camp as seen from Pumori High Camp. Every year, the number of tents around here increases. On the left, we can see that tents are now literally pitched inside Khumbu glacier due to a lack of space and stable ground elsewhere. Puddles have begun to form due to high temperatures which we can see in the foreground of this photo.
The Khumbu that I saw some 16 years ago is vastly different from the Khumbu of today. There were no tea houses then, only a handful of big hotels and restaurants. Often hotel owners wouldn’t let us Nepali support staff enter their rooms or restaurants. We had to take rest in small tea houses or hotels called “bhatti”. Where there was no bhatti or porter houses, we even had to take refuse under open sky or in caves. I have spent many a nights huddled in caves with fellow porters all along the Everest route.
Lukla airport is the entryway to Everest base camp for most of the climbers and trekkers. In the early days, yaks and people used to transfer a lot of materials. Now, choppers are there 24/7 ferrying all sorts of supplies. Human and yak traffic has become less. It would take a month to reach EBC as one started out trek from Jiri. But now people climb Everest in 10 hours. They are able to climb an 8000m peak, and return home within a month.
Life at Base Camp (5334 m)
In 2014, I was at base camp as a local climbing guide. That was also the year when 16 Nepali guides and porters died due to a massive avalanche near Khumbu icefall including some of my closest friends. I escaped the avalanche by 3 minutes. Despite these risks, it is our job to come back again and again. This year in 2022, after 2 years break due to COVID, I was again back on Everest with the Nepal Army Mountain Clean Up Campaign as the expedition leader.
Expedition companies try to give all kinds of facilities and services to their clients. Everest is a competitive business.
There are fancy cottage types of tents, electric beds, showers, wifi, coffee shop, bakery bars to name a few facilities. Year by year, the luxury on Everest has only increased. While it is more comfortable for all of us, it is also worrying to some extent. Human activities are viewed as reasons for artificial temperature increase of the area during active Everest season.
The Leave No Trace (LNT) principle recommends to avoid camping close to water and toilet trails to facilitate wildlife or protect the sources. But due to the limited space in EBC, it has become almost difficult to comply with all of the rules to safeguard physical environment against human encroachment.
With faster ice and glacier melting, the ground at EBC is becoming more unstable every year. Khumbu glacier, right next to base camp, is melting at an alarming pace. While it has become easier for us to get water at the base camp now, it is not a good sign as this glacier is a major source of water for the entire Khumbu region and downstream regions.
When I arrived at base camp in early spring of 2022, it was still pretty much a land of frozen ice. But two months later, as I was wrapping up the expedition, there were already several big water bodies formed as ice melted away.
Below is a photo of the Khumbu glacier I took this year. While it is visually stunning, it’s a scene that should ring alarm bells in all of us. Khumbu glacier is melting fast. Heat induced by day time activities of human and the sun melts the snow enough towards the evening that we can see a small stream trickling down the glacier. The stream freezes towards the night as it gets colder, but again melts the next day. This is the first time that I have seen flowing river in base camp. I am both amazed and aghast.
This rapid melting of Khumbu glacier is perhaps best demonstrated by a side by side comparison of the place with a photo I took in 2019 -just 3 years back. The ice structures used to be quite tall and massive, now they are shorter and in some places completely gone exposing more rocky surface.
Through the Khumbu Icefall (5,500-5800 m)
To climb Everest, climbers begin by going through Khumbu icefall immediately after basecamp.
The Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) lays fixed rope in this section along with numbering of all the bridges and ladders that they have installed. Below is the picture of the first ladder in the icefall. The SPCC informs the expedition companies and climbers which section of the ascent is dangerous or risky by using these numbers. This year, bridge number 4 and 5 were considered more dangerous.
This is a series of photos I took just above the base camp in Khumbu icefall section. This is another example of how swiftly the mountain changes its landscape.
This is another series of photos in Khumbu Icefall to demonstrate the sheer amount of change the Everest landscape has gone through.
This area which was relatively safe in 2017 is now fraught with risks. There are huge ice walls and unstable ice pillars on both sides, unstable ice pillars. Not only climbing, but descending from these areas is also extremely tricky. Two people also met with accidents in here this year.
There’s an increased risk in climbing mountains when year after year the landscape changes so drastically that we don’t know what to expect. This is another series of photos I took from the same spot in the icefall which demonstrates more changes and difficulty in expedition.
The below photos are taken in the “popcorn” section near camp 1 and above Khumbu Icefall. There were thousands of years of ice layers and debris in the Khumbu icefall. Now in this photo, we can see how swiftly the ice layers are melting and forming other shapes and structures.
We need to have the highest safety standards as there is risk in every step of the way. But sadly, the support crew or local climbing guides often are unprotected. Most of them are not able to buy gears and clothes required for high altitude mountaineering. They buy cheaper local gears and make do with what they have. They are the ones transporting and stocking essential supplies like food and oxygen from base camp all the way to Camp 4. They carry a load of 30-40kg from Base camp to camp 2 and take back similar amounts of used supplies down below. I clicked these photos of local climbing guides in Khumbu Icefall who doesn’t even have a safety helmet. They often times don’t prefer helmets as it’s difficult to carry huge loads on their head with a helmet on.
Even as we are climbing high mountains with so much risk, there are moments when we are just speechless by the beauty around us. This was one such moment in my climb this year. In the dangerous, unstable section of Khumbu icefall, popularly known as popcorn, I saw this blue water pool trapped within ice walls. Perhaps they will not be there next year for me to enjoy. Such is the nature of this mountain.
Camp 1 (6100m)
After passing through the treacherous Khumbu Icefall, we arrive at Camp 1 which gives us a paradise view of the mountains. It is a relief to see the colorful tents of camp 1 after trudging in snow for hours.
Up until 2017, it was relatively easy to set up tents here as the area was wide and firm. But in 2019, this wide expansive land gradually begin to develop fissures so the camp site shifted a little bit to the side. In 2022, the entire wide field has now heavy crevasses and fissure, forcing the site to shift further, closer to Nuptse face. This also increases danger for the camp as there is chances of rock and snowfall from Nuptse. Every year the route also changes as the ice and snow glacier is very unstable.
Camp 2 (6400m)
The most clear signs of change in the upper part of Everest can be seen in Camp 2.
These photos are taken from the same spot within 6 years.
In 2017, it was difficult to find a proper camp site in Camp 2 because it would be full of snow. It has now become a rock glacier from ice glacier. There is an increased risk of avalanche, specially during heavy snowfall, as people have begun to camp around rock splinters as seen in the photo below.
We can also find expedition companies storing gears in this section. After earthquake of 2015 and pandemic, some companies has not been able to return and retrieve their stored items. In this photo below, the colorful clothes like thing in the right is actually gear stored by some company which has been lying there since 2015.
Camp 3 (7300m)
Lhotse face is a big plateau between Camp 2 and Camp 3. As far back as 2017, this plateau was intact. Now, we can see that there are huge open as well as hidden and deep crevasses here -due to rapid melting of ice. This is a crucial life and death zone. It looks beautiful in photos when we see climbers lined up one after another climbing here. But it is very difficult to walk here, it is almost a vertical way up towards Everest.
Yellow Band
As we move towards camp 4 from camp 3, we come across the Yellow Band. It’s a scenic valley with Mount Pumori (7161 m) towering above us. There is a band of colorful yellowish rock in this area. This is also where one feels the most change in climbing as the body begins to have a harder time with the high altitude.
From Camp 3 upwards, I don’t see as much changes in the landscape. Which may indicate that the global warming as well as local temperature increase hasn’t reached above 7300m. But next year, who knows what we’ll see.
But after all Everest is Everest. All the steps we take here is a risk. Despite knowing this, people come here every year. We can see many climbers taking selfie photos and videos throughout the route. It is after all a memorable moment however hard it is.
Camp 4 (8000m)
Camp 4 is our last accommodation and resting point before summit push. The push for summit usually starts around evening at 6pm. We walk in a single line following the fixed rope. We carry water and oxygen bottles with us. First we head into the section called “balcony” during the night. There will be a long line of people behind us and in front of us. Usually we change oxygen bottle after reaching the balcony. And then we move straight towards the top. Usually when we are climbing through the night here, it is an otherworldly experience. We cannot see any dangerous part of the mountain. We can only see a few feet in front of us but our focus must be absolute.
We reach south summit after balcony just after dawn. This year my mask didn’t work as we stepped on south summit. I sent the clients ahead with the assistant and stayed back. After about an hour, I fixed my mask and joined the team. After south summit comes the Hillary Step notorious for the world’s highest traffic jam. This year was no different. We were stuck in the jam for 1 hour and 20 minute in this death zone.
Although I had been to Everest many times as climbing guide, I had never been able to summit due to avalanche, earthquake and so on. Once I had to return from right below summit at 8300m due to client’s health condition. So it was a magnificent feeling to be summitting Everest 16 years after I stepped on its base camp as a young porter.
Everest Summit (8848m)
We reached the summit 15 hours after starting from camp 4. When I reached the top, I forgot every pain and hardship that I had to suffer so far, even my exhaustion. I got the most wonderful feeling ever. And this spirit helped me climb down safely as well.
Now there’s talk of shifting Everest base camp. Global warming has definitely hit Everest and Nepali mountains hard. While the local human activities may affect the melting of snow to some extent, I think that is a very small part of what’s actually changing the landscape here. Shifting base camp is only going to put more burden on the Nepali workers, and may even put off many clients as the time to scale Everest increases. And even these seasonal effects can be mitigated if we follow more stringent measures. Will shifting Everest base camp prevent climate change here? I think not. We all should be definitely more aware about what kind of activities we do in base camp or higher up, we should try to minimize our energy usage and must maintain activities to protect and safeguard the fragile environment there.
There’s so much we have, and so much we can do to protect our mountains, and the people who depend on it to make a living. Nepal government should think about sustainable tourism and how we can become a premiere adventure hub for people all over the world while also protecting our valuable resources.
With photo and text editing support from Heema Rai.
