You Don’t Hate Mount Everest Climbers Enough

You may hate your job, or generally resent whatever it is you do for a living in order to afford a place to lay your head, but I feel confident in the assertion that whatever it is you do, it’s preferable to being the guy whose job it is to clear ice from the ascent of Mount Everest at 20,000 feet so some rich asshole can blare to Instagram about how they climbed to the roof of the world and triumphed over God and nature. Your job is also no doubt preferable to being one of the guys employed by the governments of Tibet or Nepal to clear ever-accumulating debris and trash from the higher stretches of the iconic mountain, left there by the same rich assholes as they check an item from their bucket list. And your job is indisputably better than being, heaven forbid, one of the guys who must carry one of the aforementioned rich assholes back down the mountain after they collapse from a combination of oxygen deprivation and bloated ego. Because if there’s one thing about Everest that is eternal, it’s the fact that it inexorably draws the most insufferable, irresponsible souls toward its deadly summit.

If you’ve seen headlines about Mount Everest recently, it’s probably because those attempting to summit the peak have been held back in the last few weeks by the whims of nature itself. We’re now in the midst of what is typically the annual Everest climbing season, a narrow band that stretches from mid-April to about the end of May, when conditions on the mountain are most calm, mild and favorable to climbers reaching the summit … which is a massive “relatively speaking” thing to say. Several weeks of progress on the 2026 season have been lost, however, by a massive obstacle blocking the path to any progression: A 100-foot serac, or newly frozen column of ice, that was blocking the way forward on the deadly Khumbu Icefall, one of the first hazards tackled by climbers after leaving Everest Base Camp.

Huge chunk of glacier blocks Everest route in peak climbing season: A significant, unstable 100-foot ice block, known as a serac, has materialized just below Camp 1 on Mount Everest’s Nepalese route, critically obstructing access for “icefall doctors” and delaying the… https://ranked.news/701873?u=b

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— Ranked News (@rankednews.bsky.social) Apr 23, 2026 at 8:05 PM

Enter the “icefall doctors,” the specialized group of intensely hardy men, most of them members of the Sherpa people, who forge ahead of all the weekend warriors to make the path up the mountain as non-deadly as it can possibly be made. Every year, the icefall doctors create new routes across areas like the Khumbu Icefall, a shifting mass of icy chasms that is in constant transformation–effectively a frozen river, where portions can break free at any time. Despite being lower on the mountain, the Khumbu Icefall has actually been the single deadliest point on Mount Everest historically speaking, due to the way climbers must cross over gaps on rickety aluminum ladders or bridges, or the potential for avalanches or chunks of ice to break away. In 2014, an ice wall collapsed while icefall doctors and Sherpa guides were working to prepare paths for climbers, resulting in the deaths of 16 guides. It remains the single deadliest day in the mountain’s history, surpassing incidents like the famous 1996 blizzard disaster. The 2014 climbing season was canceled as a result.

There is, suffice to say, an insane degree of pressure that the icefall doctors are put under on a yearly basis. They already make the ascent possible for many climbers who frankly would have no idea whatsoever how to successfully summit the mountain without their labor-intensive assistance–at the beginning of the season, the icefall doctors “fix” the route by setting up networks of ropes, ladders, markers and other equipment for the use of climbers and other guides. Now, as hundreds of climbers gather and spend weeks waiting at the Everest Base Camp below, they struggle with impassable ice and the demands of climbing companies and irate vacationers to move (chunks) of mountains. Looking at the quotes given by some of the climbing companies in the vein of “there’s been a few ideas flown around about salt and everything,” as if truckloads of salt are going to be flown up to aid in the melting of a giant ice column, you get a sense of the impatience that the sherpas are probably dealing with here. As Adriana Brownlee, a climbing company owner at Everest Base Camp said to CNN: “Icefall doctors are trying everything in their power. They’re using latest technology, 3D imagery, drones, everything to try and get a clear picture as to timing and how feasible it would be for the serac to actually collapse, for it to be safe enough to go up.”

As of today, that has apparently happened: The serac on the Khumbu Icefall has reportedly melted/been cleared enough by the efforts of the self-sacrificing icefall doctors for the beginning of the climbing season to move forward toward Camp I, located at roughly 19,880 feet. From there it’s merely another 9,000 vertical feet of elevation or so toward the summit. Piece of cake.

Sherpas are the unsung heroes of the mountains! They do Not only carry heavy loads but also guide climbers and they often risk their lives to help climbers in the challenging spots.
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— Skardu Expedition Treks And Tours☑️ (@skardu-expedition.bsky.social) Apr 26, 2026 at 1:43 PM

In reality, however, even a few missed weeks of the climbing season, as 2026 has already experienced, increases the likelihood of later disaster for the hundreds of people with designs on making the summit. This is because it inevitably crams more people into a shorter window of favorable conditions for making the later ascents, which can result in overcrowding and single file lines at various choke points along the way. This becomes a particular danger when one advances past the “death zone” of 26,000 feet and both atmospheric pressure and available oxygen plummets, meaning that overcrowding on Everest can quickly turn into a mass casualty event even on a day with favorable weather conditions, simply because progress takes too long and the human body can’t endure it. In fact, that’s exactly what infamously happened on May 22, 2019, when 11 people died on Everest due to exhaustion, delays, oxygen deprivation and freezing temperatures, with climbers like 55-year-old Don Cash dying as they stood in line, waiting to descend the treacherous Hillary Step. The threat of overcrowding also proved deadly in 2023, which challenged 2014 and 2015 for the deadliest years on record.

Disturbingly, this kind of exposure to death on Everest almost seems to breed a certain contempt for it in the climbers, who must pass by the frozen, immovable bodies of numerous other adventurers within the “death zone” in particular, many of whom have become grim landmarks along the route. In some cases, as in the death of 34-year-old English climber David Sharp, fellow climbers have drawn criticism for their lack of compassion and humanity, with dozens passing by the man as he lay slowly dying of hypothermia because they were instead intent on their own reaching of the summit. It’s as if the attitude is “I paid $70,000 for permits and guides to be here, so there’s no circumstances on Earth that are going to stop me.” Any sense of responsibility to help others is minimized.

Given the egocentric focus that is perhaps in all reality necessary to power oneself toward the summit, it should probably come as no surprise that the people making the ascent have for decades also been constantly littering and shedding garbage wherever they go, especially within the higher reaches of the mountain. The fourth and final camp beyond 26,000 feet is notoriously full of discarded debris of all kinds, including tents, gear and countless oxygen canisters that have been abandoned rather than carried back down the mountain by those whose strength has been utterly depleted by time in the death zone. And indeed, the death zone itself is utterly littered with gear, ropes, oxygen tanks and bodies, in an area where organic waste and trash more or less refuses to decompose given the extreme cold and UV radiation. One of the most persistent types of accumulated filth is human excrement, which likewise pretty much never degrades–the mountain just becomes more and more covered in shit over the decades.

‘Mount Everest is no longer clean in many areas, as it is covered with trash like gas cylinders, plastic, and abandoned tents, especially around base camps, which harms the environment.’

WeatherMonitors [x]

Everest’s decline blamed on trail of rich tourists > www.theguardian.com/guardianweek…

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— The Final Report (@firehorse249791.bsky.social) Mar 31, 2026 at 2:44 PM

This degradation of one of the Earth’s most iconic points is rightfully depressing to those who see such a location as more than just an ego trip to be conquered, and after decades of half measures and inconsistent efforts to remove waste and trash from the mountain, there has been a renewed push in the last year to institute a plan that will hopefully result in a net reduction of the trash on Everest … even though climate change has contributed to melting snow and ice that has merely exposed new layers of long-buried trash. Regardless, the recently unveiled five-year Everest Cleaning Action Plan from Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation seems like a step in the right direction, increasing the requirements of what climbers and their guides are expected to do to reduce trash and physically remove some of the debris during each descent. That includes the human waste, by the way: “Poop bags” are now mandatory above base camp for the first time, and climbers are expected to bring those bags back down with them. Add that to your Everest calculus, if you’re feeling bold.

In general, the governments of Nepal and Tibet (which manages the less traversed north side of the mountain) have seemingly finally gotten more serious about keeping more inexperienced climbers from assuming they can just pay their way to the roof of the world. My favorite new addition: Just a few months ago, Nepal’s National Assembly passed a new bill that will require Everest tourists to submit proof that they had already climbed one of Nepal’s other, slightly less deadly 7,000 meter-plus mountains before they can be issued a permit to pursue Mount Everest. This, to me, seems like a no brainer: Weed out the less experienced climbers by having them tackle slightly less daunting peaks in order to prove to themselves that Everest is actually feasible for them, while simultaneously reducing the chances of deadly overcrowding/congestion on the iconic peak itself.

In the end, there’s no foolproof action that these governments can take that will dampen the allure of Everest as one the globe’s premier dick-measuring locales. But if you can remove the most burdensome of the rich assholes from the roof of the world, that’s still a victory for the more respectful of climbers. Just please remember to bag your shit, okay?