Experiencing the realities of climbing Mount Everest

Mount Everest is the highest point on the planet, peaking at a staggering 29,000 feet above sea level. Since it was scaled by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, it has become the bucket list destination for climbers, thrill seekers, and general outdoor enthusiasts everywhere. But is it worth the time, money, and extreme danger to tread on top of the world? Today, we're taking a look at what it's actually like to climb Mount Everest. OK, hope you're wearing plenty of layers, because we're going all the way to the top. Stretching up from the Himalayas along the Chinese-Nepal border is Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain. You don't get a superlative like that without inviting a bunch of amateur adventurers to try and climb you. So expeditions to the mountain's peak have become a lucrative industry. But climbing Mount Everest is no walk in the park, unless your parks extend 3 and 1 half miles into the sky and require months of physical preparation to visit, then it's exactly like walking in the park. While it only takes about five days to go from base camp to the summit and back down again, your body isn't quite ready to begin the ascent until it has gotten acclimated to the extreme conditions first. People who have successfully climbed Mount Everest described the ordeal as being comparable to running on a treadmill while trying to breathe through a straw. Before getting to the peak, climbers must condition their bodies by spending time at various checkpoints throughout the ascent. These quick trips or rotations involve climbing to the next camp and back down to the original camp, followed by a resting period of five to eight days between each climb. All of this is to prepare your red blood cells to make more oxygen for your lungs. This step is unavoidable, and everyone, including Sherpas, must undergo this process. It's like an unskippable training mission in a video game. It gets pretty goddamn cold up on Everest. The wind chill is minus 148 degrees for most of the year. Conditions only cooperate long enough for a human to make the climb for a small two-week window at the end of May. But while the temperatures are toned down slightly, climbers are still at high risk for frostbite and hypothermia. Temperatures consistently drop below zero, perfect conditions to cause loss of circulation in toes or fingers. Exposed skin can freeze instantly, like a T-100 blasted with liquid nitrogen. Hasta la vista, baby. Frostbitten skin changes color and may cause joints to stop working. Affected digits must be warmed up quickly or risk amputation. Approximately 300 people have perished trying to scale Mount Everest since 1953, including 11 in 2019. Even with modern climbing gear, weather prediction, and GPS, one in every 100 climbers has a chillingly real chance of losing their lives on the way up. It's estimated there are roughly 200 ice-cold corpses sprinkled throughout the mountain, several of which are visible to climbers making the journey. These frozen sentinels are gruesome to observe, but not totally unexpected. It's understood by most climbers that at some point, you're going to see a stiff. Due to the incredible costs of retrieving them from their open-air graves, these long-expired adventurers are usually found exactly where they fell and remain there for years, like gas station billboards. Imagine a frozen hellscape, complete with massive avalanches, near-impassable crevasses, falling 100-ton blocks of ice, and delicate snow bridges that can collapse at any step. Now, we're not describing a national treasure film. That's the stone-cold reality of Khumbu Icefall. This colossal 3,000-foot-tall frozen waterfall could take anywhere from three to eight hours to cross, using ropes and sometimes ladder bridges to make your way across the precarious crevasses. And if that doesn't get your heart racing enough, did we mention the whole ordeal is done in pitch black darkness? In order to make the eventual descent in the daylight, climbers need to ascend through the dark wee hours of the morning using only their headlamps to light the way. Once you're at the top, the danger of falling off the side only increases with an 8,000-foot drop on one side and a 10,000-foot drop on the other. Climbers like to joke that if you're going to fall, choose the 10,000-foot drop. Why? Because you'll live longer. While making your way up any mountain, a climber can begin to develop a condition called acute mountain sickness, usually causing lethargy and headaches. But once you enter what is known as the death zone of Everest, those light symptoms can take a dangerous turn, which you probably guessed by the name. In addition to risks for a stroke and heart attack, a climber's lungs and brain are vulnerable to edema. High altitude pulmonary edema, or HAPE, causes the lungs to fill with liquid, leading to shortness of breath, fluid-filled coughs, and the choking feeling of suffocation. So leave the merino wools at home. Every climber goes through some form of this nightmare scenario, and the symptoms can range from the obvious, like rasping lungs, to dangerously unobvious. And if you wanted some more scary acronyms, HACE, or high-altitude cerebral edema, is another condition which causes nausea, delirium, and brain swelling due to lack of oxygen. This can lead to some pretty odd behavior, such as shedding clothing in the frigid temperatures and talking to people who aren't there. Oh, unless they're talking to ghosts. There must be a few of them up there. Even though climbers work diligently to acclimate themselves to the reduction in oxygen, human life just cannot be sustained at 8,000 meters. The oxygen is so thin, humans can't function, hence the name death zone. After all, they are hanging out in the same vicinity as small aircraft. Climbers do carry oxygen with them, but they need to pack so light for the trip already that there isn't room for a lot of it. Once you hit that not so sweet spot, it becomes a race against the clock between your mountaintop glory and your body literally shutting down. Snow blindness may sound like an affliction that makes you overpay for ski vacations, but it is yet another one of Everest's considerable dangers. For one thing, you're a lot closer to the sun up there than you are down here. And the sun is notoriously not eye friendly. Also, all that low oxygen action we mentioned earlier can cause the blood vessels in your eyeballs to burst. That is, if they don't first straight up freeze in your skull like chilled grapes. Climber Brian Dickinson experienced a bone chilling brush with snow blindness. During a solo climb, Dickinson dropped his goggles, allowing ice to form inside and crack the lenses. A descent that should have taken three hours took seven as his eyeballs burned and his vision became blurry. Dickinson luckily had some naval training, which assisted his navigation. But the harsh conditions on Mount Everest are more than capable of blinding anyone who sets their eyes on it. Mount Everest is notoriously home to constant thievery. Most of the time, inexperienced climbers without oxygen steal the supplies they need to continue on, such as tanks and food. This can lead to life-threatening situations when a climber reaches into their pack for a sandwich only to find they've been robbed on a mountain, which is way worse than getting robbed at, say, the YMCA. And if you're counting on having enough oxygen for the seven-bottle requirement and they're not there, you may as well just set yourself down and let the mountain take you. That or return to base camp, whatever the vibe is. Everest made headlines in 2019 for the long lines of climbers waiting at the summit and the lives lost as a result of being stuck in the punishing cold. But according to Sherpas familiar with the climb, This isn't a new problem. Long lines are annoying at Disney World or the DMV, but a stalled queue at the summit of Everest can cause an agonizing demise. And the longer you wait in line, the less time there is to experience the view and savor the grueling accomplishment of reaching the very top. This overcrowding issue has been blamed on Nepal issuing too many climbing permits. But the weather is also partly to blame for the 2019 fiasco, which shaved the normally fair weathered window from two weeks to about one day, causing a rush for the summit. One less obvious challenge of attempting to scale Everest is that there aren't exactly any rest stops along the climb. So to put it maturely, where does all the poop go? Climbers have reported taking steps to constipate themselves for the journey, but when nature calls, you are obliged to answer. Digging a hole in the frozen ground is one option, but that gets increasingly difficult to do the higher you go. Everest base camps provide blue barrel toilet substitutes that can be carried to frozen lakes or emptied into pits. But climbers should still expect to find surprises littered throughout the hike like a frozen dog park. And all that poo can't break down in the freezing temperatures, so the waste shrivels up and releases dangerous gases, which can contaminate the water supply and spread sickness through the base camps. The hundreds of climbing enthusiasts who flock to Everest every year are also devout littering enthusiasts, leaving their trash behind after they head out. Gas canisters, oxygen bottles, broken camping equipment, and slews of unnecessary items get left behind. And with no waste management company on the premises, the trash just sits there. If the hellish conditions of this haunted, corpse-filled mountain don't kill you, the price tag just might. Serious climbers willing to reach new heights have been known to shell out tens of thousands of dollars just to get a crack at that radical rock. It costs over $40,000 to hire a good Sherpa. And trust us, that's one area in which you shouldn't skimp. Some of the best climbers can convince companies to sponsor their attempt, but most regular schlubs save up for decades to complete the sometimes $130,000 trip to Everest's penthouse. Also, Everest does not offer refunds. So if the weather is bad when you make your trip, odds are you're just going to eat that cost, which includes $11,000 for a permit, airfare, lodging, and food. Tack on the cost of the required medical evacuation insurance and climbing equipment, and you might be better off staying at home and renting Cliffhanger.