When the first edition of Into Thin Air was published not long after the Mount Everest disaster of 1996, in which eight climbers died in a severe storm, I thought that the disturbing events I described in my book would convince inexperienced climbers that paying a lot of money to be guided up the highest mountain on Earth was a bad idea. I was wrong. The great dangers I wrote about attracted new climbers to Everest like gamblers in a slot machine. The owner of a famous guide company told me that Into Thin Air It was a better advertisement for his business than anything he could have imagined.
When I climbed the summit of Everest in May 1996, I was, according to Himalayan databaseonly the 621st person to reach it since the mountain was first climbed, in May 1953. In the 30 years following my climb, Everest was climbed about 13,000 times. At least 90 percent of the planting was done by customers and employees of leading commercial companies. As these staggering numbers suggest, climbing the world’s tallest mountain is a very different experience than it was in 1996. More specifically, there are now more Everest climbers. less likely to die. From 1921, when the first major attempt to climb the mountain was made, to 1996, one person was killed, on average, for every five who reached the summit. Over the next 28 years, that ratio dropped to one death for every 68 summits. In 2025, only five climbers died and 866 reached the summit, a ratio of one death for every 173 climbers who reached the summit.
The odds of surviving an Everest expedition can be surprising, given the many images of horrific traffic jams on the mountain that have proliferated in recent years. But the real dangers posed by this crowd have been mitigated by other developments. Weather forecasts are more accurate, oxygen masks are better and more reliable, guided climbers are now widely available. oxygen cylinders if they are willing to pay, and every commercial climbing client is usually brought to the top of the mountain by at least one personal Sherpa guide.
And Jon Krakauer
Perhaps the most important change in the last 30 years, however, is the transfer of power and agency on the mountain: from European and American horsemen and guide companies to the Nepalese. Thanks to the high demand for skilled workers on Everest, many more Nepalis are now employed by commercial guiding operations; today they represent most of the highly qualified leaders. Even more remarkable is the dramatic increase in the number of Nepali-owned and operated trekking services, who now form the majority of the leading companies on Everest.
Nepalis no longer work as kitchen workers and porters. Now they are often the most experienced and accomplished guides on the mountain. For all intents and purposes, climbing operations on the Nepalese side of Everest—where most climbs take place—are controlled by Sherpas. They install and maintain dozens of ladders and miles of rope installed on the mountain. They call the shots. They are the guards. This is quite appropriate, given that the mountain rises from the homeland of the Sherpas, an indigenous tribe, and they have been an integral part of Everest expeditions since the first attempts to climb it.
This remarkable change can be traced to a variety of factors, but among the most important is the creation of the Khumbu Climbing Center, a project launched by American mountaineers Jenni Lowe and Conrad Anker to teach technical climbing skills to Nepali high-altitude workers. The idea to create a training program for Sherpas came from Jenni’s first husband, Alex Lowe, a friend and frequent hiking partner of mine, who had been appalled, on many Himalayan expeditions, at how little technical training many Sherpas had received, putting them at great risk.
Tragically, Alex was killed in an avalanche on Shishapangma, a 26,335-foot Tibetan peak, in October 1999, before he had the chance to accomplish his goal. In 2004, Jenni, together with her second husband, Conrad, launched the first Khumbu Climbing School in the village of Phortse. (I volunteered as an instructor that inaugural year, and again in 2005.) The Khumbu Climbing Center, as it is now known, has certified more than 1,000 Nepalese guides, who are currently employed by commercial guiding companies on Everest and around the world.
Nepali workers deserve a lot of credit for making Everest a more dangerous mountain than it was before. But climbing is still very dangerous, especially for the Sherpas themselves. Because clients are now receiving more supplemental oxygen than they used to, crews must make more trips through the Khumbu Icefall (a constantly shifting, 2,000-foot-high glacier) to carry extra canisters up the mountain. Additionally, the rapidly warming Himalayan climate is making the snow and ice covering much of Everest more unstable, making the falls more likely to occur. a mass casualty incident like the avalanche that killed 16 Nepali workers April 14, 2014.
Despite the great dangers they face, Nepalis have often failed to receive the respect they deserve from foreign climbers. Anger over this has grown for decades among the Sherpas. In 2013, a frenzy erupted on a glacier at 23,000 feet. (The incident was recounted in more detail in Melissa Arnot Reid’s memoir, It’s enoughEarlier that year, Nepalese expedition leaders announced that on April 27, a large team of Sherpas would begin installing fixed ropes on Everest’s Lhotse Face, and required climbers to stay away for the duration of the operation. Everyone complied with this request except two well-known alpinists, Ueli Steck and Simone Moro, and the cinematographer who documented their ascent, Jonathan Griffith. The European climbers stayed more than 100 feet from the Sherpa team for most of the climb, but to get to Camp 3, they had to walk directly over the Sherpas as they worked. While doing so, the Europeans inadvertently dropped small pieces of ice that hit a few Sherpas.
According to Arnot Reid, who was on the mountain that day, the Sherpas were angry—partly because the falling ice was a real danger, but mostly because they saw the Europeans’ disrespect for the mountain’s closure as disrespectful. An argument broke out on the face of a steep glacier, where Moro directed foul language at Mingma Tenzing, the leader of the Sherpa rope team. This was so offensive to the Sherpas that the whole team immediately abandoned their unfinished work and descended to Camp 2. When the European climbers descended on the camp shortly after, a mob of 100 angry Sherpas confronted them, throwing stones at the climbers and kicking them as they fell to the ground. As the violence escalated, Arnot Reid persuaded Moro to kneel and beg for forgiveness. When he reluctantly agreed, the crowd dispersed, allowing Steck and Moro to escape down the Khumbu Icefall with minor injuries and their tails between their legs.
The conflict was devastating, but it led to a more honest, long-overdue accounting of the historical relationship between Sherpas and foreign climbers — an assessment reinforced by a labor strike sparked by the avalanche of 2014. These shocking events forced visitors to acknowledge that Sherpas have played an important role—and faced disproportionate risk—in nearly every major Everest expedition since the very first in 1921, but rarely treated as equals or elite climbers.
A key event in the Sherpas’ struggle for honor occurred on January 16, 2021, when 10 of Nepal’s most accomplished mountain guides braved strong winds and temperatures of 58 degrees below zero to complete the first winter ascent of K2, the planet’s second highest peak—a peak much more difficult and dangerous than Eve’s. Considered the last great unsolved challenge in high-altitude mountaineering, the ascent of K2 was attempted many times without success by some of the world’s strongest climbers before an all-Nepalese team reached the summit, 28,251 feet above sea level, and. he sang the national anthem of Nepal in abundance. The video of the moment went viral, drawing praise from around the world. According to one of the team’s leaders, Mingma Gyalje Sherpa (also known as “Mingma G”), their surprise was “about giving justice to our future generations.” Almost 100 years after the first Sherpa death on Everest, the hard-earned respect achieved by the Nepalese mountaineers was incredible to behold.
Other developments since 1996 have been less positive. The groups of climbers who now arrive every April to be guided up the Nepalese side of Everest provide a major boost to the regional economy, but their presence is very damaging to the environmentand new regulations on waste and human waste disposal have failed to adequately address the damage.
Developments over the past 30 years have brought a different kind of damage as well. Climbing to the highest point on Earth is still a high-risk adventure and usually requires weeks of intense effort. But the upgrading of the mountain has removed much of what once made climbing Everest such a unique experience. As journalist Carl Hoffman considered in the inspection of a recent book on the Everest guiding industry, these companies do a wonderful service by providing the expertise and support that now enables almost anyone to climb Everest. Even so, he writes, “it’s hard not to look at those pictures of customers piled up on the side of the mountain in long lines, clutching their belts and not think: Total. That something fundamental to human inquiry and adventure and experience is lost, lost; that what they have bought is something completely different from his idea of making it useless.”
This is true, I am sad to say. But if you’ve got what it takes, you can still climb Everest the same way mountaineers of old did—including Reinhold Messner’s minimalist style of solo climbing. On August 20, 1980, Messner reached the summit of Everest alone, in a monsoon storm, through a new route on the Tibetan side of the peak, without relying on bottled oxygen, established camps, ropes, or other humans of any nation. It is still considered the greatest mountain climbing feat of all time.
If you don’t want to play the full Messner, you can respect the mountain’s historic stature and avoid the crowds by rejecting the good weather of the spring climbing season and attempting to climb in the cold, snowy fall months, or simply staying off the two main guided routes. By taking the direct route to Everest’s massive North Face instead, or attempting the remote Kangshung Face, you’re unlikely to encounter other people, and you’re guaranteed to experience all the hardships you could wish for. You also have a good chance of getting killed. Which explains, of course, why such routes remain uncrowded: Most of the crowd who attempt Everest these days just want to reach the summit with as little effort and risk as possible, in any way that offers a high probability of success.
After what I went through in 1996, I don’t tend to blame them.
This essay was adapted from Jon Krakauer’s 30th anniversary edition. Into Thin Airwhich will be released on May 10.
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