Mount Everest Is in Trouble

Rapidly melting ice made this year especially dangerous for climbers

By Stacy Meichtry, Krishna Pokharel, Carl Churchill and Paolo Bosonin | Photographs and video by Paolo Bosonin
Dec. 18, 2023
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The Khumbu Glacier has long been the gateway to the top of Mount Everest. It’s a rare source of drinking water in a windswept wasteland and it's home to Everest Base Camp, where thousands of people visit every year, many of them staying for weeks. Now the glacier is in trouble.

A rise in temperatures across the Himalayas is thinning its ice at an accelerating clip. Growing activity at Base Camp, built directly on top of the glacier, compounds the problem.

Glaciers worldwide are melting more quickly, but researchers say the ice loss across the Himalayas has become especially rapid. That threatens to disrupt vital waterways that feed the Indian subcontinent, affecting agriculture and living conditions for hundreds of millions of people.

A view looking up the Khumbu Icefall

On Everest, the fallout is more immediate. Nepal’s government is weighing whether to relocate Base Camp down the mountain, a contentious move that would make an arduous climb even longer—and more dangerous.

Eighteen people have died on the mountain this year, according to the Himalayan Database, making it the deadliest stretch in Everest’s history.

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The ice melt is eroding a pillar of Nepal’s economy. Everest is at the center of a tourism industry that in 2022 supported more than a million jobs and contributed $2.4 billion to Nepal’s economy, or 6.1% of its GDP, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

The Himalayan valleys depend on climbers and hikers from around the world who sleep and eat at tea houses along the route to Everest. Ethnic Sherpa people carry supplies from village to village on yaks or on their own backs, sometimes in loads as heavy as 175 pounds.

The nerve center of this economy is Base Camp, where tents with beds and en-suite bathrooms are equipped with electricity and heating.

Kitchen tents prepare meals worthy of hotel menus in Kathmandu. Wealthy clients, who pay as much as $160,000 to climb Everest, can fly into the camp’s heliport.

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In early April, a team of “icefall doctors,” responsible for maintaining the icefall route, opened the route for the start of the climbing season. The accelerating melt had transformed their work from a weekly job to a daily one.

The icefall doctors weren’t alone in noticing changes. When Khim Lal Gautam, a surveyor for the government of Nepal, visited Base Camp in spring 2021, he was stunned by how loud the sound of meltwater—rushing beneath the glacier’s surface—had become.

An engineer by training, Gautam estimated the use of propane gas across the camp was enough to melt three million kilograms of ice every season. Campers tended to urinate outside, dumping around 4,000 liters of warm liquid on Khumbu each day, he said.

“A very alarming situation,” Gautam said. He helped prepare a 2022 report to Nepal’s government that recommended moving Base Camp, adding: “If this human pressure continues at the current condition, the base camp may soon be left without any ice.”

Operators questioned whether any other location was feasible. The report recommended the area around Gorak Shep, a tiny hamlet further down the trail. But moving the camp would lengthen the climb to the top, making it more dangerous than it already is.

Melting ice has made the icefall less stable. On April 12, a team of Sherpas set out to reopen the trail to the top of Mount Everest for the season.

On the way down, Lakpa Sona Sherpa stopped for a cigarette break and watched three of his colleagues continue on. Suddenly, a giant ice block crashed down, burying them. Lakpa Sona rushed toward the accident and radioed his teammates, but there was no response.

In the days that followed, a crevasse opened up at the site of the accident, widening so much that a trio of ladders had to be fixed together to bridge the chasm. The route to the top of the world’s highest mountain was intact, just barely.

A view from Everest Base Camp shows climbers with their headlights on navigating through the Khumbu Icefall. Photo: Khim Lal Gautam

Corrections & Amplifications: The use of propane gas at Everest Base Camp was enough to melt more than three million kilograms of ice every climbing season, estimated Khim Lal Gautam, a surveyor for the government of Nepal. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said three billion kilograms. Also, the article misspelled Gautam’s name as Gautum in one instance. (Corrected on Dec. 18)

Photo Editor: Allison Pasek
Produced by Brian Patrick Byrne

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