It’s now proven that you can race up Everest and back inside a week by acclimatising with xenon gas, but most people still have to do it the old-fashioned way.
That means bottled oxygen, long queues up the Hillary Step – deep in the death zone – and costs that can exceed £100,000 a climber on high-end commercial expeditions. Fees don’t normally include the removal of spent gas canisters or the bodies of the roughly 1% of climbers who die on the way up or down.
This year’s spring climbing season ended at the end of May yesterday on Saturdaywith the dismantling of fixed ropes and ladders up the Khumbu Icefall and the coming of the monsoon.
Bad weather kept hundreds of climbers at base camp for long periods but most of the 457 climbers issued permits by the Nepal Mountaineering Association made it in the end.
Kami Rita Sherpa reached the summit for a record 31st time and Britain’s Kenton Cool did so for the 19th time – a record for a non-Nepali. After Cool broke both heels falling off a rockface in Wales aged 22, he was told he probably wouldn’t walk again without a stick.
It’s rush-hour gridlock as mountaineers queue for the summit.
Mountaineers celebrate with a selfie on Everest’s highest peak.
Kami Rita Sherpa, third left, holder of the record for most ascents, takes part in prayers.
A sherpa hands a climber a vodka after a ritual for a safe ascent.
A line of climbers making the ascent to Camp 2, the advanced base camp at an altitude of 6,400m..
Everest base camp becomes a village of tents during the climbing season between April and May, when conditions are at their fairest.
On the way to Camp 4, called the death zone due to the risk of altitude sickness at 8,000m.
A mountaineer practises ladder crossings in training at Khumbu Icefall, above base camp.
Photographs by Pasang Rinzee, Kunga Sherpa & Jenfin Lama/AP
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