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On 29 May 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first climbers to summit Mt Everest. 70 years later this season, nearly 600 climbers have followed the route they took. At least 17 have been killed since March.

Photo: NAREN THAKURI

70 years after the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain, at least 600 climbers this season followed the route taken by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary to the summit of Mt Everest (pictured above on 17 May).

Next year will be the centenary of the 1924 British expedition to Chomolungma during which George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were last seen below the summit pyramid. Did the pair reach the top? Mallory’s body was found in 1999 on the North Face, but no clues about whether they were the first to climb the peak.

A lot has changed in Himalayan climbing in the past seven decades, but new records are still being broken. This year Kami Rita Sherpa and Pasang Dawa Sherpa broke their own and each other’s records twice with 28 and 27 summits respectively. Hari Budha Magar became the first above knee double amputee to reach the summit.

The style of expeditions has also changed. Most purist mountaineers shun the crowds on Everest, and are tackling lesser unclimbed peaks, and exploring new routes alpine style without guides, oxygen and fixed camps.

Everest

The record set by Nims Purja to climb 14 eight-thousanders in just six months in 2019, and the worldwide publicity from his Netflix documentary and the Covid backlog brought many more mountaineers to Everest this year. The trend of climbing multiple 8,000ers in Nepal by hopping on helicopters from one base camp to the next has also caught on.

Ad hoc mountaineering rules, bureaucratic hassles in Kathmandu, over-commercialisation, theft of expedition gear, corpses, garbage and traffic jams have tarnished the Everest brand. But just this mountain earns the Nepal government $5 million every season in fees, aside from the income to guides, porters and lodges along the way.

There are still expeditions led by well-known Western climbers, but more and more slick Nepali companies like Seven Summits, Elite Exped or Imagine Nepal are now guiding clients up Himalayan peaks not just in Nepal, but in Pakistan and China as well.

There are calls to diversify expeditions to other mountains, and climbers have been flocking to Ama Dablam, Manaslu and Annapurna.

But the main attraction is still Mt Everest because, as Mallory famously said, “it is there”.

Everest Timeline
Everest Timeline
Everest Timeline
Everest Timeline
Everest Timeline
Everest Timeline
Everest Timeline
Everest Timeline



Everest Timeline


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