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 is one of the most ­startling images ever taken on a mountain: the picture, from May 2019, showed a long queue of hundreds of climbers stretched out single file on an icy knife edge just below the summit of Mount Everest.

They are all in what is known ominously as the ‘death zone’, an altitude above 26,000ft, where the human body begins to shut down rapidly due to a catastrophic lack of natural oxygen.

For some observers, the picture represented the ultimate despoliation of the singular splendour of the world’s highest mountain, all for commercial gain.

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

Before that, 14 expeditions had failed to conquer the 29,035 ft peak. Between that first ascent and 1992, only 394 ­climbers reached the top.

The picture, from May 2019, showed a long queue of hundreds of climbers stretched out single file on an icy knife edge just below the summit of Mount Everest

Between 1992 and 2024, more than 11,500 accomplished the same feat, almost all the clients of a few mountain guiding businesses, and all paying 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 hazardous, become a holiday you could buy, just like a Caribbean cruise?

In this compelling, exhaustively-researched book about the Everest industry, Will Cockrell, an experienced adventure writer, tries to answer the question. At the same time, he tackles the complex moral issues involved: if you ­virtually eliminate jeopardy, are you killing the spirit of adventure? And just because you have $100,000 to play with, should you be entitled to buy such a remarkable personal achievement?

But the fact remains that even if you are being guided up the mountain, climbing ladders, and hooked on to pre-placed ropes, all the while breathing bottled oxygen deposited en route by your guides, an ascent of Everest remains a powerful test of heart, fitness and endurance. And it is still a very dangerous place: steep, cold, wind-battered.

Just because an industry has developed to get climbers to the top doesn’t eliminate all hazards, as the recent disappearance of a 40-year-old British climber Daniel Paterson and his Nepali guide Pastenji Sherpa, 23, illustrates only too tragically.

Cockrell traces the birth of the guiding industry to a wealthy Texan industrialist called Dick Bass, who had ­conceived a plan to climb the highest mountains on all seven continents. At noon on April 30, 1985, Bass stepped on to the summit of Everest, on his fourth attempt, accompanied by the veteran mountaineer and film-maker Dave Breashears.

Bass was the 174th person to stand on top of the world and, at 55, the oldest. He knew he was never a ‘real’ climber, and nor did he want to become 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 were then able to 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 was becoming a commodity and, led by enterprising and skilled mountaineers, the guiding businesses started flooding in. Everest base camp, the destination for anyone wanting to attempt the peak on the Nepal side, is, at 17,600 ft, itself a monumental height for most people. For the early pioneers, it would now be unrecognisable.

Row upon row of tents, neatly ordered like at Glastonbury, are sprawled across more than a mile of rock and ice. Impressive stone ­shelters act as mess tents, cooking stations and, during downtime, ­casinos and saloons.

Briton Daniel Paterson has not ben seen since reaching the summit of Everest last Tuesday

Nepali guide Pastenji Sherpa, 23, who was with Mr Paterson, is also still missing

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 some late-night whisky-fuelled poker.

This didn’t go down well with everybody. Hillary said: ‘Sitting round base camp knocking back cans of beer, I don’t particularly regard as mountaineering. It is becoming so that you can go to the beach for your holiday — or climb Everest.’

And the climber and guide Pet Athans observed, ‘People think it’s still an adventure: it’s more of an adventure figuring out the New York subway system.’ But for Cockrell, the climbers who the guides are bringing up are not spoiling the mountain, they are sharing it. They might 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 notorious ‘conga line’ photograph was taken by a Nepali mountaineer called Nirmal Purja, known as Nims and the most famous climber in the world.

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

When he turned to climbing, he ascended three 8,000 m peaks in five days: Everest, Lhotse and Makalu. In 2018, he announced he would climb all the 8,000 m peaks in seven months, the previous record being well over seven years.

Nims scaled all 14 peaks in just over six months. It was a titanic achievement, but equally a tribute to his organisational skills, with abundant oxygen, scores of climbers fixing the routes and a helicopter to get to the next base camp as fast as possible.

This compelling, exhaustively-researched book about the Everest industry is written by Will Cockrell, an experienced adventure writer

As his profile skyrocketed, he lined up book and film deals, and formed a guiding company, Elite Exped. He is able to ask $1 million for private one-on-one guiding, which is what he reputedly charged Princess Asma Al Thani of Qatar for taking her to the summit of Everest in 2022. I’m sure she could afford it.

Nims is not to everybody’s taste — for some he is too egotistical, an empire builder — but he is the face of the new Nepali leaders dominating Everest and the Himalayan climbing industry.

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

This is very much Cockrell’s view in this fascinating book, and if you approve of wealth creation (as I do), then what is happening on Everest is largely a good thing. I just wish he was slightly less gung-ho about it.

As Venice is not alone in discovering, tourism can be damaging — even arduous adventure tourism — and the beauty of the world’s wild places must be cared for. If exploration and adventure becomes too easy and too safe, then a fundamental part of what it means to be human is lost.