title: Mount Everest

text: The remainder of the North Col Formation, exposed between on Mount Everest, consists of interlayered and deformed schist, phyllite, and minor marble. Between , the North Col Formation consists chiefly of biotite-quartz phyllite and chlorite-biotite phyllite intercalated with minor amounts of biotite-sericite-quartz schist. Between , the lower part of the North Col Formation consists of biotite-quartz schist intercalated with epidote-quartz schist, biotite-calcite-quartz schist, and thin layers of quartzose marble. These metamorphic rocks appear to be the result of the metamorphism of Middle to Early Cambrian deep sea flysch composed of interbedded, mudstone, shale, clayey sandstone, calcareous sandstone, graywacke, and sandy limestone. The base of the North Col Formation is a regional low-angle normal fault called the "Lhotse detachment".


title: Mount Everest

text: Below 7,000 m (23,000 ft), the Rongbuk Formation underlies the North Col Formation and forms the base of Mount Everest. It consists of sillimanite-K-feldspar grade schist and gneiss intruded by numerous sills and dikes of leucogranite ranging in thickness from 1 cm to 1,500 m (0.4 in to 4,900 ft). These leucogranites are part of a belt of Late Oligocene–Miocene intrusive rocks known as the Higher Himalayan leucogranite. They formed as the result of partial melting of Paleoproterozoic to Ordovician high-grade metasedimentary rocks of the Higher Himalayan Sequence about 20 to 24 million years ago during the subduction of the Indian Plate.


title: Mount Everest

text: Mount Everest consists of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks that have been faulted southward over continental crust composed of Archean granulites of the Indian Plate during the Cenozoic collision of India with Asia. Current interpretations argue that the Qomolangma and North Col formations consist of marine sediments that accumulated within the continental shelf of the northern passive continental margin of India before it collided with Asia. The Cenozoic collision of India with Asia subsequently deformed and metamorphosed these strata as it thrust them southward and upward. The Rongbuk Formation consists of a sequence of high-grade metamorphic and granitic rocks that were derived from the alteration of high-grade metasedimentary rocks. During the collision of India with Asia, these rocks were thrust downward and to the north as they were overridden by other strata; heated, metamorphosed, and partially melted at depths of over below sea level; and then forced upward to surface by thrusting towards the south between two major detachments. The Himalayas are rising by about 5 mm per year.


title: Mount Everest

text: In respect of the recognition of the 'highest rocks on the planet' as fossiliferous, marine limestone, the 'Ordovician Rocks of Mount Everest' were included by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) in its assemblage of 100 'geological heritage sites' around the world in a listing published in October 2022. The organisation defines an 'IUGS Geological Heritage Site' as 'a key place with geological elements and/or processes of international scientific relevance, used as a reference, and/or with a substantial contribution to the development of geological sciences through history.'


title: Mount Everest

text: There is very little native flora or fauna on Everest. A moss grows at on Mount Everest. It may be the highest altitude plant species. An alpine cushion plant called "Arenaria" is known to grow below in the region. According to the study based on satellite data from 1993 to 2018, vegetation is expanding in the Everest region. Researchers have found plants in areas that were previously deemed bare.


title: Mount Everest

text: "Euophrys omnisuperstes", a minute black jumping spider, has been found at elevations as high as , possibly making it the highest confirmed non-microscopic permanent resident on Earth. In the base camp of Everest the jumping spider "Euophrys everestensis" occurs. It lurks in crevices and may feed on frozen insects that have been blown there by the wind. There is a high likelihood of microscopic life at even higher altitudes.


title: Mount Everest

text: Birds, such as the bar-headed goose, have been seen flying at the higher altitudes of the mountain, while others, such as the chough, have been spotted as high as the South Col at . Yellow-billed choughs have been seen as high as and bar-headed geese migrate over the Himalayas. In 1953, George Lowe (part of the expedition of Tenzing and Hillary) said that he saw bar-headed geese flying over Everest's summit.


title: Mount Everest

text: Yaks are often used to haul gear for Mount Everest climbs. They can haul 100 kg (220 pounds), have thick fur and large lungs. Other animals in the region include the Himalayan tahr which is sometimes eaten by the snow leopard. The Himalayan black bear can be found up to about and the red panda is also present in the region. One expedition found a surprising range of species in the region including a pika and ten new species of ants.


title: Mount Everest

text: The base camp for Everest expeditions based out of Nepal is located by Khumbu Glacier, which is rapidly thinning and destabilizing due to climate change, making it unsafe for climbers. As recommended by the committee formed by Nepal's government to facilitate and monitor mountaineering in the Everest region, Taranath Adhikari—the director general of Nepal's tourism department—said they have plans to move the base camp to a lower altitude. This would mean a longer distance for climbers between the base camp and Camp 1. However, the present base camp is still useful and could still serve its purpose for three to four years. The move may happen by 2024, per officials.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 2008, a new weather station at about elevation went online. The station's first data in May 2008 were air temperature , relative humidity 41.3 per cent, atmospheric pressure 382.1 hPa (38.21 kPa), wind direction 262.8°, wind speed 12.8 m/s (28.6 mph, 46.1 km/h), global solar radiation 711.9 watts/m, solar UVA radiation 30.4 W/m. The project was orchestrated by Stations at High Altitude for Research on the Environment (SHARE), which also placed the Mount Everest webcam in 2011. The solar-powered weather station is on the South Col.


title: Mount Everest

text: Mount Everest extends into the upper troposphere and penetrates the stratosphere. The air pressure at the summit is generally about one-third what it is at sea level. The altitude can expose the summit to the fast and freezing winds of the jet stream. Winds commonly attain ; in February 2004, a wind speed of was recorded at the summit.


title: Mount Everest

text: These winds can hamper or endanger climbers, by blowing them into chasms or (by Bernoulli's principle) by lowering the air pressure further, reducing available oxygen by up to 14 per cent. To avoid the harshest winds, climbers typically aim for a 7- to 10-day window in the spring and fall when the Asian monsoon season is starting up or ending.


title: Mount Everest

text: Because Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, it has attracted considerable attention and climbing attempts. Whether the mountain was climbed in ancient times is unknown. It may have been climbed in 1924, although this has never been confirmed, as neither of the men making the attempt returned. Several climbing routes have been established over several decades of climbing expeditions to the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: Everest's first known summiting occurred by 1953, and interest by climbers increased. Despite the effort and attention poured into expeditions, only about 200 people had summitted by 1987. Everest remained a difficult climb for decades, even for serious attempts by professional climbers and large national expeditions, which were the norm until the commercial era began in the 1990s.


title: Mount Everest

text: By March 2012, Everest had been climbed 5,656 times with 223 deaths. Although lower mountains have longer or steeper climbs, Everest is so high the jet stream can hit it. Climbers can be faced with winds beyond when the weather shifts. At certain times of the year the jet stream shifts north, providing periods of relative calm at the mountain. Other dangers include blizzards and avalanches.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 1885, Clinton Thomas Dent, president of the Alpine Club, suggested that climbing Mount Everest was possible in his book "Above the Snow Line".


title: Mount Everest

text: The northern approach to the mountain was discovered by George Mallory and Guy Bullock on the initial 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition. It was an exploratory expedition not equipped for a serious attempt to climb the mountain. With Mallory leading (and thus becoming the first European to set foot on Everest's flanks) they climbed the North Col to an altitude of . From there, Mallory espied a route to the top, but the party was unprepared for the great task of climbing any further and descended.


title: Mount Everest

text: The British returned for a 1922 expedition. George Finch climbed using oxygen for the first time. He ascended at a remarkable speed— per hour, and reached an altitude of , the first time a human reported to climb higher than 8,000 m. Mallory and Col. Felix Norton made a second unsuccessful attempt.


title: Mount Everest

text: The next expedition was in 1924. The initial attempt by Mallory and Geoffrey Bruce was aborted when weather conditions prevented the establishment of Camp VI. The next attempt was that of Norton and Somervell, who climbed without oxygen and in perfect weather, traversing the North Face into the Great Couloir. Norton managed to reach , though he ascended only or so in the last hour. Mallory rustled up oxygen equipment for a last-ditch effort. He chose young Andrew Irvine as his partner


title: Mount Everest

text: On 8 June 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made an attempt on the summit via the North Col-North Ridge-Northeast Ridge route from which they never returned. On 1 May 1999, the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory's body on the North Face in a snow basin below and to the west of the traditional site of Camp VI. Controversy has raged in the mountaineering community whether one or both of them reached the summit 29 years before the confirmed ascent and safe descent of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 1933, Lady Houston, a British millionairess, funded the Houston Everest Flight of 1933, which saw a formation of two aeroplanes led by the Marquess of Clydesdale fly over the Everest summit.


title: Mount Everest

text: Early expeditions—such as Charles Bruce's in the 1920s and Hugh Ruttledge's two unsuccessful attempts in 1933 and 1936—tried to ascend the mountain from Tibet, via the North Face. Access was closed from the north to Western expeditions in 1950 after China took control of Tibet. In 1950, Bill Tilman and a small party which included Charles Houston, Oscar Houston, and Betsy Cowles undertook an exploratory expedition to Everest through Nepal along the route which has now become the standard approach to Everest from the south.


title: Mount Everest

text: The 1952 Swiss Mount Everest Expedition, led by Edouard Wyss-Dunant, was granted permission to attempt a climb from Nepal. It established a route through the Khumbu icefall and ascended to the South Col at an elevation of . Raymond Lambert and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were able to reach an elevation of about on the southeast ridge, setting a new climbing altitude record. Tenzing's experience was useful when he was hired to be part of the British expedition in 1953. One reference says that no attempt at an ascent of Everest was ever under consideration in this case,


title: Mount Everest

text: although John Hunt (who met the team in Zurich on their return) wrote that when the Swiss Expedition "just failed" in the spring they decided to make another post-monsoon (summit ascent) attempt in the autumn; although as it was only decided in June the second party arrived too late, when winter winds were buffeting the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 1953, a ninth British expedition, led by John Hunt, returned to Nepal. Hunt selected two climbing pairs to attempt to reach the summit. The first pair, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, came within of the summit on 26 May 1953, but turned back after running into oxygen problems. As planned, their work in route finding and breaking trail and their oxygen caches were of great aid to the following pair. Two days later, the expedition made its second assault on the summit with the second climbing pair: the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepali Sherpa climber. They reached the summit at 11:30 local time on 29 May 1953 via the South Col route. At the time, both acknowledged it as a team effort by the whole expedition, but Tenzing revealed a few years later that Hillary had put his foot on the summit first. They paused at the summit to take photographs and buried a few sweets and a small cross in the snow before descending.


title: Mount Everest

text: News of the expedition's success reached London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, 2 June. A few days later, the Queen gave orders that Hunt (a Briton) and Hillary (a New Zealander) were to be knighted in the Order of the British Empire for the ascent. Tenzing, a Nepali Sherpa who was a citizen of India, was granted the George Medal by the UK. Hunt was ultimately made a life peer in Britain, while Hillary became a founding member of the Order of New Zealand. Hillary and Tenzing have also been recognised in Nepal. In 2009, statues were raised in their honour, and in 2014, Hillary Peak and Tenzing Peak were named for them.


title: Mount Everest

text: On 23 May 1956, Ernst Schmied and Juerg Marmet ascended. This was followed by Dölf Reist and Hans-Rudolf von Gunten on 24 May 1957. Wang Fuzhou, Gonpo and Qu Yinhua of China made the first reported ascent of the peak from the North Ridge on 25 May 1960. The first American to climb Everest, Jim Whittaker, joined by Nawang Gombu, reached the summit on 1 May 1963.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 1970, Japanese mountaineers conducted a major expedition. The centrepiece was a large "siege"-style expedition led by Saburo Matsukata, working on finding a new route up the southwest face. Another element of the expedition was an attempt to ski Mount Everest. Despite a staff of over one hundred people and a decade of planning work, the expedition suffered eight deaths and failed to summit via the planned routes. However, Japanese expeditions did enjoy some successes. For example, Yuichiro Miura became the first man to ski down Everest from the South Col – he descended nearly from the South Col before falling with extreme injuries. Another success was an expedition that put four on the summit via the South Col route. Miura's exploits became the subject of film, and he went on to become the oldest person to summit Mount Everest in 2003 at age 70 and again in 2013 at the age of 80.


title: Mount Everest

text: The 1975 British Mount Everest Southwest Face expedition led and organised by Chris Bonington made the first ascent of the south west face of Everest from the western cwm.


title: Mount Everest

text: The 1976 British and Nepalese Army Expedition to Everest led by Tony Streather put Bronco Lane and Brummy Stokes on the summit by the normal route.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler made the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen.


title: Mount Everest

text: The Polish climber Andrzej Zawada headed the first winter ascent of Mount Everest, the first winter ascent of an eight-thousander. The team of 20 Polish climbers and 4 Sherpas established a base camp on Khumbu Glacier in early January 1980. On 15 January, the team managed to set up Camp III at 7150 metres above sea level, but further action was stopped by hurricane-force winds. The weather improved after 11 February, when Leszek Cichy, Walenty Fiut and Krzysztof Wielicki set up camp IV on South Col (7906 m). Cichy and Wielicki started the final ascent at 6:50 am on 17 February. At 2:40 pm Andrzej Zawada at base camp heard the climbers' voices over the radio – "We are on the summit! The strong wind blows all the time. It is unimaginably cold." The successful winter ascent of Mount Everest started a new decade of Winter Himalaism, which became a Polish specialisation. After 1980 Poles did ten first winter ascents on 8000 metre peaks, which earned Polish climbers a reputation of "Ice Warriors".


title: Mount Everest

text: In May 1989, Polish climbers under the leadership of Eugeniusz Chrobak organised an international expedition to Mount Everest on a difficult western ridge. Ten Poles and nine foreigners participated, but ultimately only the Poles remained in the attempt for the summit. On 24 May, Chrobak and Andrzej Marciniak, starting from camp V at 8,200 m, overcame the ridge and reached the summit. But on 27 May, during an avalanche from the side of Khumbutse near the Lho La pass, four Polish climbers were killed: Mirosław Dąsal, Mirosław Gardzielewski, Zygmunt Andrzej Heinrich and Wacław Otręba. The following day, due to his injuries, Chrobak also died. Marciniak, who was also injured, was saved by a rescue expedition in which Artur Hajzer and New Zealanders Gary Ball and Rob Hall took part. In the organisation of the rescue expedition they took part, inter alia Reinhold Messner, Elizabeth Hawley, Carlos Carsolio and the US consul.


title: Mount Everest

text: On 10 and 11 May 1996, eight climbers died after several guided expeditions were caught in a blizzard high up on the mountain during a summit attempt on 10 May. During the 1996 season, 15 people died while climbing on Mount Everest. These were the highest death tolls for a single weather event, and for a single season, until the sixteen deaths in the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche. The guiding disaster gained wide publicity and raised questions about the commercialisation of climbing and the safety of guiding clients on Mount Everest.


title: Mount Everest

text: Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from "Outside" magazine, was in one of the affected guided parties, and afterward published the bestseller "Into Thin Air", which related his experience. Krakauer was critical of guide Anatoli Boukreev in his recollection of the expedition. A year later, Boukreev co-authored "The Climb," in part as a rebuttal of Krakauer's portrayal. The dispute sparked a debate within the climbing community. Boukreev was later awarded The American Alpine Club's David Sowles Award for his rescue efforts on the expedition.


title: Mount Everest

text: In May 2004, physicist Kent Moore and surgeon John L. Semple, both researchers from the University of Toronto, told "New Scientist" magazine that an analysis of weather conditions on 11 May suggested that weather caused oxygen levels to plunge about 14 per cent.


title: Mount Everest

text: One of the survivors was Beck Weathers, an American client of New Zealand–based guide service Adventure Consultants. Weathers was left for dead about 275 metres (900 feet) from Camp 4 at 7,950 metres (26,085 feet). After spending a night on the mountain, Weathers managed to make it back to Camp 4 with massive frostbite and vision impaired due to snow blindness. When he arrived at Camp 4, fellow climbers considered his condition terminal and left him in a tent to die overnight.


title: Mount Everest

text: Weathers' condition had not improved and an immediate descent to a lower elevation was deemed essential. A helicopter rescue was out of the question: Camp 4 was higher than the rated ceiling of any available helicopter. Weathers was lowered to Camp 2. Eventually, a helicopter rescue was organised thanks to the Nepali Army.


title: Mount Everest

text: The storm's impact on climbers on the North Ridge of Everest, where several climbers also died, was detailed in a first-hand account by British filmmaker and writer Matt Dickinson in his book "The Other Side of Everest". Sixteen-year-old Mark Pfetzer was on the climb and wrote about it in his account, "Within Reach: My Everest Story".


title: Mount Everest

text: In 2006, 12 people died. One death in particular (see below) triggered an international debate and years of discussion about climbing ethics. The season was also remembered for the rescue of Lincoln Hall who had been left by his climbing team and declared dead, but was later discovered alive and survived being helped off the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: There was an international controversy about the death of a solo British climber David Sharp, who attempted to climb Mount Everest in 2006 but died in his attempt. The story broke out of the mountaineering community into popular media, with a series of interviews, allegations, and critiques. The question was whether climbers that season had left a man to die and whether he could have been saved. He was said to have attempted to summit Mount Everest by himself with no Sherpa or guide and fewer oxygen bottles than considered normal. He went with a low-budget Nepali guide firm that only provides support up to Base Camp, after which climbers go as a "loose group", offering a high degree of independence. The manager at Sharp's guide support said Sharp did not take enough oxygen for his summit attempt and did not have a Sherpa guide. It is less clear who knew Sharp was in trouble, and if they did know, whether they were qualified or capable of helping him.


title: Mount Everest

text: Double-amputee climber Mark Inglis said in an interview with the press on 23 May 2006, that his climbing party, and many others, had passed Sharp, on 15 May, sheltering under a rock overhang below the summit, without attempting a rescue. Inglis said 40 people had passed by Sharp, but he might have been overlooked as climbers assumed Sharp was the corpse nicknamed "Green Boots", but Inglis was not aware that Turkish climbers had tried to help Sharp despite being in the process of helping an injured woman down (a Turkish woman, Burçak Poçan). There has also been some discussion about Himex in the commentary on Inglis and Sharp. In regards to Inglis's initial comments, he later revised certain details because he had been interviewed while he was "...physically and mentally exhausted, and in a lot of pain. He had suffered severe frostbite – he later had five fingertips amputated." When they went through Sharp's possessions they found a receipt for US$7,490, believed to be the whole financial cost. Comparatively, most expeditions are between $35,000 to US$100,000 plus an additional $20,000 in other expenses that range from gear to bonuses. It was estimated on 14 May that Sharp summitted Mount Everest and began his descent down, but 15 May he was in trouble but being passed by climbers on their way up and down. On 15 May 2006 it is believed he was suffering from hypoxia and was about from the summit on the North Side route.


title: Mount Everest

text: Beck Weathers of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster said that those who are dying are often left behind and that he himself had been left for dead twice but was able to keep walking. "The Tribune" of Chandigarh, India quoted someone who described what happened to Sharp as "the most shameful act in the history of mountaineering". In addition to Sharp's death, at least nine other climbers perished that year, including multiple Sherpas working for various guiding companies.


title: Mount Everest

text: Much of this controversy was captured by the "Discovery Channel" while filming the television program "". A crucial decision affecting the fate of Sharp is shown in the program, where an early returning climber Lebanese adventurer Maxim Chaya is descending from the summit and radios to his base camp manager (Russell Brice) that he has found a frostbitten and unconscious climber in distress. Chaya is unable to identify Sharp, who had chosen to climb solo without any support and so did not identify himself to other climbers. The base camp manager assumes that Sharp is part of a group that has already calculated that they must abandon him, and informs his lone climber that there is no chance of him being able to help Sharp by himself. As Sharp's condition deteriorates through the day and other descending climbers pass him, his opportunities for rescue diminish: his legs and feet curl from frostbite, preventing him from walking; the later descending climbers are lower on oxygen and lack the strength to offer aid; time runs out for any Sherpas to return and rescue him.


title: Mount Everest

text: David Sharp's body remained just below the summit on the Chinese side next to "Green Boots"; they shared a space in a small rock cave that was an ad hoc tomb for them. Sharp's body was removed from the cave in 2007, according to the BBC, and since 2014, Green Boots has been missing, presumably removed or buried.


title: Mount Everest

text: As the Sharp debate kicked off on 26 May 2006, Australian climber Lincoln Hall was found alive after being left for dead the day before. He was found by a party of four climbers (Dan Mazur, Andrew Brash, Myles Osborne and Jangbu Sherpa) who, giving up their own summit attempt, stayed with Hall and descended with him and a party of 11 Sherpas sent up to carry him down. Hall later fully recovered. His team assumed he had died from cerebral edema, and they were instructed to cover him with rocks. There were no rocks around to do this and he was abandoned. The erroneous information of his death was passed on to his family. The next day he was discovered alive by another party.


title: Mount Everest

text: Lincoln Hall went on to live for several more years, often giving talks about his near-death experience and rescue, before dying from unrelated medical issues in 2012 at the age of 56 (born in 1955).


title: Mount Everest

text: On 21 May 2007, Canadian climber Meagan McGrath initiated the successful high-altitude rescue of Nepali Usha Bista. Recognising this rescue, Major McGrath was selected as a 2011 recipient of the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation of Canada Humanitarian Award, which recognises a Canadian who has personally or administratively contributed a significant service or act in the Himalayan Region of Nepal.


title: Mount Everest

text: By the end of the 2010 climbing season, there had been 5,104 ascents to the summit by about 3,142 individuals, with 77 per cent of these ascents being accomplished since 2000. The summit was achieved in 7 of the 22 years from 1953 to 1974 and was not missed between 1975 and 2014. In 2007, the record number of 633 ascents was recorded, by 350 climbers and 253 sherpas.


title: Mount Everest

text: An illustration of the explosion of popularity of Everest is provided by the numbers of daily ascents. Analysis of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster shows that part of the blame was on the bottleneck caused by a large number of climbers (33 to 36) attempting to summit on the same day; this was considered unusually high at the time. By comparison, on 23 May 2010, the summit of Mount Everest was reached by 169 climbers – more summits in a single day than in the cumulative 31 years from the first successful summit in 1953 through 1983.


title: Mount Everest

text: There have been 219 fatalities recorded on Mount Everest from the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition through the end of 2010, a rate of 4.3 fatalities for every 100 summits (this is a general rate, and includes fatalities amongst support climbers, those who turned back before the peak, those who died en route to the peak and those who died while descending from the peak). Of the 219 fatalities, 58 (26.5 per cent) were climbers who had summited but did not complete their descent. Though the rate of fatalities has decreased since the year 2000 (1.4 fatalities for every 100 summits, with 3938 summits since 2000), the significant increase in the total number of climbers still means 54 fatalities since 2000: 33 on the northeast ridge, 17 on the southeast ridge, 2 on the southwest face, and 2 on the north face.


title: Mount Everest

text: Nearly all attempts at the summit are done using one of the two main routes. The traffic seen by each route varies from year to year. In 2005–07, more than half of all climbers elected to use the more challenging, but cheaper northeast route. In 2008, the northeast route was closed by the Chinese government for the entire climbing season, and the only people able to reach the summit from the north that year were athletes responsible for carrying the Olympic torch for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The route was closed to foreigners once again in 2009 in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's exile. These closures led to declining interest in the north route, and, in 2010, two-thirds of the climbers reached the summit from the south.


title: Mount Everest

text: The 2010s were a time of new highs and lows for the mountain, with back-to-back disasters in 2013 and 2014 causing record deaths. In 2015 there were no summits for the first time in decades. However, other years set records for numbers of summits – 2013's record number of summiters, around 667, was surpassed in 2018 with around 800 summiting the peak, and a subsequent record was set in 2019 with over 890 summiters.


title: Mount Everest

text: On 18 April 2014, an avalanche hit the area just below the Base Camp 2 at around 01:00 UTC (06:30 local time) and at an elevation of about . Sixteen people were killed in the avalanche (all Nepali guides) and nine more were injured.


title: Mount Everest

text: During the season, a 13-year-old girl, Malavath Purna, reached the summit, becoming the youngest female climber to do so. Additionally, one team used a helicopter to fly from South base camp to Camp 2 to avoid the Khumbu Icefall, then reached the Everest summit. This team had to use the south side because the Chinese had denied them a permit to climb. A team member (Jing Wang) donated US$30,000 to a local hospital. She was named the Nepali "International Mountaineer of the Year".


title: Mount Everest

text: Over 100 people summited Everest from China (Tibet region), and six from Nepal in the 2014 season. This included 72-year-old Bill Burke, the Indian teenage girl, and a Chinese woman Jing Wang. Another teen girl summiter was Ming Kipa Sherpa who summited with her elder sister Lhakpa Sherpa in 2003, and who had achieved the most times for woman to the summit of Mount Everest at that time. (see also Santosh Yadav)


title: Mount Everest

text: 2015 was set to be a record-breaking season of climbs, with hundreds of permits issued in Nepal and many additional permits in Tibet (China). However, on 25 April 2015, an earthquake measuring 7.8 M triggered an avalanche that hit Everest Base Camp, effectively shutting down the Everest climbing season. 18 bodies were recovered from Mount Everest by the Indian Army mountaineering team. The avalanche began on Pumori, moved through the Khumbu Icefall on the southwest side of Mount Everest, and slammed into the South Base Camp. 2015 was the first time since 1974 with no spring summits, as all climbing teams pulled out after the quakes and avalanche. One of the reasons for this was the high probability of aftershocks (over 50 per cent according to the United States Geological Survey). Just weeks after the first quake, the region was rattled again by a 7.3 magnitude quake and there were also many considerable aftershocks.


title: Mount Everest

text: The quakes trapped hundreds of climbers above the Khumbu icefall, and they had to be evacuated by helicopter as they ran low on supplies. The quake shifted the route through the ice fall, making it essentially impassable to climbers. Bad weather also made helicopter evacuation difficult. The Everest tragedy was small compared to the impact overall on Nepal, with almost nine thousand dead and about 22,000 injured. In Tibet, by 28 April at least 25 had died, and 117 were injured. By 29 April 2015, the Tibet Mountaineering Association (North/Chinese side) closed Everest and other peaks to climbing, stranding 25 teams and about 300 people on the north side of Everest. On the south side, helicopters evacuated 180 people trapped at Camps 1 and 2.


title: Mount Everest

text: On 24 August 2015, Nepal re-opened Everest to tourism including mountain climbers. The only climber permit for the autumn season was awarded to Japanese climber Nobukazu Kuriki, who had tried four times previously to summit Everest without success. He made his fifth attempt in October, but had to give up just from the summit due to "strong winds and deep snow". Kuriki noted the dangers of climbing Everest, having himself survived being stuck in a freezing snow hole for two days near the top, which came at the cost of all his fingertips and his thumb, lost to frostbite, which added further difficulty to his climb.


title: Mount Everest

text: Some sections of the trail from Lukla to Everest Base Camp (Nepal) were damaged in the earthquakes earlier in the year and needed repairs to handle trekkers.


title: Mount Everest

text: 2017 was the biggest season yet, permit-wise, yielding hundreds of summiters and a handful of deaths. On 27 May 2017, Kami Rita Sherpa made his 21st climb to the summit with the Alpine Ascents Everest Expedition, one of three people in the World along with Apa Sherpa and Phurba Tashi Sherpa to make it to the summit of Mount Everest 21 times. The season had a tragic start with the death of Ueli Steck of Switzerland, who died from a fall during a warm-up climb. There was a continued discussion about the nature of possible changes to the Hillary Step. Total summiters for 2017 was tallied up to be 648. 449 summited via Nepal (from the South) and 120 from Chinese Tibet (North side).


title: Mount Everest

text: 807 climbers summited Mount Everest in 2018, including 563 on the Nepal side and 240 from the Chinese Tibet side. This broke the previous record for total summits in year from which was 667 in 2013, and one factor that aided in this was an especially long and clear weather window of 11 days during the critical spring climbing season. Various records were broken, including a summit by double-amputee Hari Budha Magar, who undertook his climb after winning a court case in the Nepali Supreme Court. There were no major disasters, but seven climbers died in various situations including several sherpas as well as international climbers. Although record numbers of climbers reached the summit, old-time summiters that made expeditions in the 1980s lamented the crowding, feces, and cost.


title: Mount Everest

text: The spring or pre-monsoon window for 2019 witnessed the deaths of a number of climbers and worldwide publication of images of hundreds of mountaineers queuing to reach the summit and sensational media reports of climbers stepping over dead bodies dismayed people around the world.


title: Mount Everest

text: There were reports of various winter expeditions in the Himalayas, including K2, Nanga Parbat, and Meru with the buzz for the Everest 2019 beginning just 14 weeks to the weather window. Noted climber Cory Richards announced on Twitter that he was hoping to establish a new climbing route to the summit in 2019. Also announced was an expedition to re-measure the height of Everest, particularly in light of the 2015 earthquakes. China closed the base-camp to those without climbing permits in February 2019 on the northern side of Mount Everest. By early April, climbing teams from around the world were arriving for the 2019 spring climbing season. Among the teams was a scientific expedition with a planned study of pollution, and how things like snow and vegetation influence the availability of food and water in the region. In the 2019 spring mountaineering season, there were roughly 40 teams with almost 400 climbers and several hundred guides attempting to summit on the Nepali side. Nepal issued 381 climbing permits for 2019. For the northern routes in Chinese Tibet, several hundred more permits were issued for climbing by authorities there.


title: Mount Everest

text: In May 2019, Nepali mountaineering guide Kami Rita summited Mount Everest twice within a week, his 23rd and 24th ascents, making international news headlines. He first summited Everest in 1994, and has summited several other extremely high mountains, such as K2 and Lhotse.


title: Mount Everest

text: By 23 May 2019, about seven people had died, possibly due to crowding leading to delays high on the mountain, and shorter weather windows. One 19-year-old who summited previously noted that when the weather window opens (the high winds calm down), long lines form as everyone rushes to get the top and back down. In Chinese Tibet, one Austrian climber died from a fall, and by 26 May 2019 the overall number of deaths for the spring climbing season rose to 10. By 28 May, the death toll increased to 11 when a climber died at about during the descent, and a 12th climber missing and presumed dead. Despite the number of deaths, reports indicated that a record 891 climbers summited in the spring 2019 climbing season.


title: Mount Everest

text: Although China has had various permit restrictions, and Nepal requires a doctor to sign off on climbing permits, the natural dangers of climbing such as falls and avalanches combined with medical issues aggravated by Everest's extreme altitude led to 2019 being a year with a comparatively high death toll.


title: Mount Everest

text: Both Nepal and China prohibited foreign climbing groups during the 2020 season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 was the third year in this decade after 2014 and 2015 which saw no summits from the Nepal (South) Side.


title: Mount Everest

text: A team of Chinese surveyors climbed Mt. Everest from the North side during April–May 2020, becoming the only climbers to summit the world's highest peak during the pandemic, at least through May. The team was there to re-measure the height of Mount Everest.


title: Mount Everest

text: On 12 May 2022, the first all-Black team summited Mt. Everest. Seven men and two women climbers from the U.S. and Kenya, guided by eight sherpas, comprised the expedition.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 2014, Nepal issued 334 climbing permits, which were extended until 2019 due to the closure. In 2015, Nepal issued 357 permits, but the mountain was closed again because of the avalanche and earthquake, and these permits were given a two-year extension to 2017.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 2017, a person who tried to climb Everest without the $11,000 permit was caught after he made it past the Khumbu icefall. He faced, among other penalties, a $22,000 fine and a possible four years in jail. In the end, he was allowed to return home but banned from mountaineering in Nepal for 10 years.


title: Mount Everest

text: The Chinese side in Tibet is also managed with permits for summiting Everest. They did not issue permits in 2008, due to the Olympic torch relay being taken to the summit of Mount Everest.


title: Mount Everest

text: In March 2020, the governments of China and Nepal cancelled all climbing permits for Mount Everest due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, a group of Chinese mountaineers began an expedition from the Chinese side. The mountain remained closed on the Chinese side to all foreign climbers. On 10 May 2021, a separation line was announced by Chinese authorities to prevent the spread of coronavirus from climbers ascending Nepal's side of the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: Mount Everest has two main climbing routes, the southeast ridge from Nepal and the north ridge from Tibet, as well as many other less frequently climbed routes. Of the two main routes, the southeast ridge is technically easier and more frequently used. It was the route used by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953 and the first recognised of 15 routes to the top by 1996. This was, however, a route decision dictated more by politics than by design, as the Chinese border was closed to the western world in the 1950s, after the People's Republic of China invaded Tibet.


title: Mount Everest

text: Most attempts are made during May, before the summer monsoon season. As the monsoon season approaches, the jet stream shifts northward, thereby reducing the average wind speeds high on the mountain. While attempts are sometimes made in September and October, after the monsoons, when the jet stream is again temporarily pushed northward, the additional snow deposited by the monsoons and the less stable weather patterns at the monsoons' tail end makes climbing extremely difficult.


title: Mount Everest

text: The ascent via the southeast ridge begins with a trek to Base Camp at on the south side of Everest, in Nepal. Expeditions usually fly into Lukla (2,860 m) from Kathmandu and pass through Namche Bazaar. Climbers then hike to Base Camp, which usually takes six to eight days, allowing for proper altitude acclimatisation in order to prevent altitude sickness. Climbing equipment and supplies are carried by yaks, dzopkyos (yak-cow hybrids), and human porters to Base Camp on the Khumbu Glacier. When Hillary and Tenzing climbed Everest in 1953, the British expedition they were part of (comprising over 400 climbers, porters, and Sherpas at that point) started from the Kathmandu Valley, as there were no roads further east at that time.


title: Mount Everest

text: Climbers spend a couple of weeks in Base Camp, acclimatising to the altitude. During that time, Sherpas and some expedition climbers set up ropes and ladders in the treacherous Khumbu Icefall.


title: Mount Everest

text: Seracs, crevasses, and shifting blocks of ice make the icefall one of the most dangerous sections of the route. Many climbers and Sherpas have been killed in this section. To reduce the hazard, climbers usually begin their ascent well before dawn, when the freezing temperatures glue ice blocks in place.


title: Mount Everest

text: From Camp I, climbers make their way up the Western Cwm to the base of the Lhotse face, where Camp II or Advanced Base Camp (ABC) is established at . The Western Cwm is a flat, gently rising glacial valley, marked by huge lateral crevasses in the centre, which prevent direct access to the upper reaches of the Cwm. Climbers are forced to cross on the far right, near the base of Nuptse, to a small passageway known as the "Nuptse corner". The Western Cwm is also called the "Valley of Silence" as the topography of the area generally cuts off wind from the climbing route. The high altitude and a clear, windless day can make the Western Cwm unbearably hot for climbers.


title: Mount Everest

text: From Advanced Base Camp, climbers ascend the Lhotse face on fixed ropes, up to Camp III, located on a small ledge at . From there, it is another 500 metres to Camp IV on the South Col at .


title: Mount Everest

text: From Camp III to Camp IV, climbers are faced with two additional challenges: the Geneva Spur and the Yellow Band. The Geneva Spur is an anvil-shaped rib of black rock named by the 1952 Swiss expedition. Fixed ropes assist climbers in scrambling over this snow-covered rock band. The Yellow Band is a section of interlayered marble, phyllite, and semischist, which also requires about 100 metres of rope for traversing it.


title: Mount Everest

text: On the South Col, climbers enter the death zone. Climbers making summit bids typically can endure no more than two or three days at this altitude. If the weather is not clear with low winds during these short few days, climbers are forced to descend, many all the way back down to Base Camp.


title: Mount Everest

text: From Camp IV, climbers begin their summit push around midnight, with hopes of reaching the summit (still another 1,000 metres above) within 10 to 12 hours. Climbers first reach "The Balcony" at , a small platform where they can rest and gaze at peaks to the south and east in the early light of dawn. Continuing up the ridge, climbers are then faced with a series of imposing rock steps which usually forces them to the east into the waist-deep snow, a serious avalanche hazard. At , a small table-sized dome of ice and snow marks the South Summit.


title: Mount Everest

text: From the South Summit, climbers follow the knife-edge southeast ridge along what is known as the "Cornice traverse", where snow clings to intermittent rock. This is the most exposed section of the climb, and a misstep to the left would send one down the southwest face, while to the immediate right is the Kangshung Face. At the end of this traverse is an imposing rock wall, the Hillary Step, at .


title: Mount Everest

text: Hillary and Tenzing were the first climbers to ascend this step, and they did so using primitive ice climbing equipment and ropes. Nowadays, climbers ascend this step using fixed ropes previously set up by Sherpas. Once above the step, it is a comparatively easy climb to the top on moderately angled snow slopes—though the exposure on the ridge is extreme, especially while traversing large cornices of snow. With increasing numbers of people climbing the mountain in recent years, the Step has frequently become a bottleneck, with climbers forced to wait significant amounts of time for their turn on the ropes, leading to problems in getting climbers efficiently up and down the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: After the Hillary Step, climbers also must traverse a loose and rocky section that has a large entanglement of fixed ropes that can be troublesome in bad weather. Climbers typically spend less than half an hour at the summit to allow time to descend to Camp IV before darkness sets in, to avoid serious problems with afternoon weather, or because supplemental oxygen tanks run out.


title: Mount Everest

text: The north ridge route begins from the north side of Everest, in Tibet. Expeditions trek to the Rongbuk Glacier, setting up base camp at on a gravel plain just below the glacier. To reach Camp II, climbers ascend the medial moraine of the east Rongbuk Glacier up to the base of Changtse, at around . Camp III (ABC—Advanced Base Camp) is situated below the North Col at . To reach Camp IV on the North Col, climbers ascend the glacier to the foot of the col where fixed ropes are used to reach the North Col at . From the North Col, climbers ascend the rocky north ridge to set up Camp V at around . The route crosses the North Face in a diagonal climb to the base of the Yellow Band, reaching the site of Camp VI at . From Camp VI, climbers make their final summit push.


title: Mount Everest

text: Climbers face a treacherous traverse from the base of the First Step: ascending from , to the crux of the climb, the Second Step, ascending from . (The Second Step includes a climbing aid called the "Chinese ladder", a metal ladder placed semi-permanently in 1975 by a party of Chinese climbers. It has been almost continuously in place since, and ladders have been used by virtually all climbers on the route.) Once above the Second Step the inconsequential Third Step is clambered over, ascending from . Once above these steps, the summit pyramid is climbed by a snow slope of 50 degrees, to the final summit ridge along which the top is reached.


title: Mount Everest

text: The summit of Everest has been described as "the size of a dining room table". The summit is capped with snow over ice over rock, and the layer of snow varies from year to year. The rock summit is made of Ordovician limestone and is a low-grade metamorphic rock. (see the 'Surveys' section for more on its height and about the Everest rock summit)


title: Mount Everest

text: Below the summit, there is an area known as "rainbow valley", filled with dead bodies still wearing brightly coloured winter gear. Down to about is an area commonly called the "death zone", due to the high danger and low oxygen because of the low pressure.


title: Mount Everest

text: Below the summit the mountain slopes downward to the three main sides, or faces, of Mount Everest: the North Face, the South-West Face, and the East/Kangshung Face.


title: Mount Everest

text: At the higher regions of Mount Everest, climbers seeking the summit typically spend substantial time within the death zone (altitudes higher than ), and face significant challenges to survival. Temperatures can dip to very low levels, resulting in frostbite of any body part exposed to the air. Since temperatures are so low, snow is well-frozen in certain areas and death or injury by slipping and falling can occur. High winds at these altitudes on Everest are also a potential threat to climbers.


title: Mount Everest

text: Another significant threat to climbers is low atmospheric pressure. The atmospheric pressure at the top of Everest is about a third of sea level pressure or , resulting in the availability of only about a third as much oxygen to breathe.


title: Mount Everest

text: Debilitating effects of the death zone are so great that it takes most climbers up to 12 hours to walk the distance of from South Col to the summit. Achieving even this level of performance requires prolonged altitude acclimatisation, which takes 40–60 days for a typical expedition. A sea-level dweller exposed to the atmospheric conditions at the altitude above without acclimatisation would likely lose consciousness within 2 to 3 minutes.


title: Mount Everest

text: In May 2007, the Caudwell Xtreme Everest undertook a medical study of oxygen levels in human blood at extreme altitude. Over 200 volunteers climbed to Everest Base Camp where various medical tests were performed to examine blood oxygen levels. A small team also performed tests on the way to the summit. Even at base camp, the low partial pressure of oxygen had direct effect on blood oxygen saturation levels. At sea level, blood oxygen saturation is generally 98 to 99 per cent. At base camp, blood saturation fell to between 85 and 87 per cent. Blood samples taken at the summit indicated very low oxygen levels in the blood. A side effect of low blood oxygen is a greatly increased breathing rate, often 80–90 breaths per minute as opposed to a more typical 20–30. Exhaustion can occur merely by attempting to breathe.


title: Mount Everest

text: Lack of oxygen, exhaustion, extreme cold, and climbing hazards all contribute to the death toll. An injured person who cannot walk is in serious trouble, since rescue by helicopter is generally impractical and carrying the person off the mountain is very risky. People who die during the climb are typically left behind. As of 2006, about 150 bodies had never been recovered. It is not uncommon to find corpses near the standard climbing routes.


title: Mount Everest

text: A 2008 study noted that the "death zone" is indeed where most Everest deaths occur, but also noted that most deaths occur during descent from the summit. A 2014 article in "The Atlantic" about deaths on Everest noted that while falling is one of the greatest dangers the death zone presents for all 8000ers, avalanches are a more common cause of death at lower altitudes. However, Everest climbing is more deadly than BASE jumping, although some have combined extreme sports and Everest including a Russian who base-jumped off Everest in a wingsuit (he did survive, though).


title: Mount Everest

text: Despite this, Everest is safer for climbers than a number of peaks by some measurements, but it depends on the period. Some examples are Kangchenjunga, K2, Annapurna, Nanga Parbat, and the Eiger (especially the "nordwand"). Some factors that affect total mountain lethality include the level of popularity of the mountain, the skill of those climbing, and the difficulty of the climb.


title: Mount Everest

text: Another health hazard is retinal haemorrhages, which can damage eyesight and cause blindness. Up to a quarter of Everest climbers can experience retinal haemorrhages, and although they usually heal within weeks of returning to lower altitudes, in 2010 a climber went blind and ended up dying in the death zone.


title: Mount Everest

text: The team made a huge effort for the next 12 hours to try to get him down the mountain, but to no avail, as they were unsuccessful in getting him through the difficult sections. Even for the able, the Everest North-East ridge is recognised as a challenge. It is hard to rescue someone who has become incapacitated and it can be beyond the ability of rescuers to save "anyone" in such a difficult spot. One way around this situation was pioneered by two Nepali men in 2011, who had intended to paraglide off the summit. They had no choice and were forced to go through with their plan anyway, because they had run out of bottled oxygen and supplies. They successfully launched off the summit and para-glided down to Namche Bazaar in just 42 minutes, without having to climb down the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: Most expeditions use oxygen masks and tanks above . Everest can be climbed without supplementary oxygen, but only by the most accomplished mountaineers and at increased risk. Humans' ability to think clearly is hindered with low oxygen, and the combination of extreme weather, low temperatures, and steep slopes often requires quick, accurate decisions. While about 95 per cent of climbers who reach the summit use bottled oxygen in order to reach the top, about five per cent of climbers have summited Everest without supplemental oxygen. The death rate is double for those who attempt to reach the summit without supplemental oxygen. Travelling above altitude is a factor in cerebral hypoxia. This decrease of oxygen to the brain can cause dementia and brain damage, as well as other symptoms. One study found that Mount Everest may be the highest an acclimatised human could go, but also found that climbers may suffer permanent neurological damage despite returning to lower altitudes.


title: Mount Everest

text: The use of bottled oxygen to ascend Mount Everest has been controversial. It was first used on the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition by George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce who climbed up to at a spectacular speed of per hour. Pinned down by a fierce storm, they escaped death by breathing oxygen from a jury-rigged set-up during the night. The next day they climbed to at – nearly three times as fast as non-oxygen users. Yet the use of oxygen was considered so unsportsmanlike that none of the rest of the Alpine world recognised this high ascent rate.


title: Mount Everest

text: George Mallory described the use of such oxygen as unsportsmanlike, but he later concluded that it would be impossible for him to summit without it and consequently used it on his final attempt in 1924. When Tenzing and Hillary made the first successful summit in 1953, they also used open-circuit bottled oxygen sets, with the expedition's physiologist Griffith Pugh referring to the oxygen debate as a "futile controversy", noting that oxygen "greatly increases subjective appreciation of the surroundings, which after all is one of the chief reasons for climbing." For the next twenty-five years, bottled oxygen was considered standard for any successful summit.


title: Mount Everest

text: Reinhold Messner was the first climber to break the bottled oxygen tradition and in 1978, with Peter Habeler, made the first successful climb without it. In 1980, Messner summited the mountain solo, without supplemental oxygen or any porters or climbing partners, on the more difficult northwest route. Once the climbing community was satisfied that the mountain could be climbed without supplemental oxygen, many purists then took the next logical step of insisting that is how it "should" be climbed.


title: Mount Everest

text: The aftermath of the 1996 disaster further intensified the debate. Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" (1997) expressed the author's personal criticisms of the use of bottled oxygen. Krakauer wrote that the use of bottled oxygen allowed otherwise unqualified climbers to attempt to summit, leading to dangerous situations and more deaths. The disaster was partially caused by the sheer number of climbers (34 on that day) attempting to ascend, causing bottlenecks at the Hillary Step and delaying many climbers, most of whom summitted after the usual 14:00 turnaround time. He proposed banning bottled oxygen except for emergency cases, arguing that this would both decrease the growing pollution on Everest—many bottles have accumulated on its slopes—and keep marginally qualified climbers off the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: Guide Anatoli Boukreev's decision not to use bottled oxygen was sharply criticised by Jon Krakauer. Boukreev's supporters (who include G. Weston DeWalt, who co-wrote "The Climb") state that using bottled oxygen gives a false sense of security. Krakauer and his supporters point out that, without bottled oxygen, Boukreev could not directly help his clients descend. They state that Boukreev said that he was going down with client Martin Adams, but just below the south summit, Boukreev determined that Adams was doing fine on the descent and so descended at a faster pace, leaving Adams behind. Adams states in "The Climb", "For me, it was business as usual, Anatoli's going by, and I had no problems with that."


title: Mount Everest

text: The low oxygen can cause a mental fog-like impairment of cognitive abilities described as "delayed and lethargic thought process, clinically defined as bradypsychia" even after returning to lower altitudes. In severe cases, climbers can experience hallucinations. Some studies have found that high-altitude climbers, including Everest climbers, experience altered brain structure. The effects of high altitude on the brain, particularly if it can cause permanent brain damage, continue to be studied.


title: Mount Everest

text: Although generally less popular than spring, Mount Everest has also been climbed in the autumn (also called the "post-monsoon season"). For example, in 2010 Eric Larsen and five Nepali guides summited Everest in the autumn for the first time in ten years. The autumn season, when the monsoon ends, is regarded as more dangerous because there is typically a lot of new snow which can be unstable. However, this increased snow can make it more popular with certain winter sports like skiing and snowboarding. Two Japanese climbers also summited in October 1973.


title: Mount Everest

text: Chris Chandler and Bob Cormack summited Everest in October 1976 as part of the American Bicentennial Everest Expedition that year, the first Americans to make an autumn ascent of Mount Everest according to the "Los Angeles Times". By the 21st century, summer and autumn can be more popular with skiing and snowboard attempts on Mount Everest. During the 1980s, climbing in autumn was actually more popular than in spring. U.S. astronaut Karl Gordon Henize died in October 1993 on an autumn expedition, conducting an experiment on radiation. The amount of background radiation increases with higher altitudes.


title: Mount Everest

text: The mountain has also been climbed in the winter, but that is not popular because of the combination of cold high winds and shorter days. By January the peak is typically battered by winds and the "average" temperature of the summit is around −33 °F (−36 °C).


title: Mount Everest

text: By the end of the 2010 climbing season, there had been 5,104 ascents to the summit by about 3,142 individuals. Some notable "firsts" by climbers include:


title: Mount Everest

text: Summiting Everest with disabilities such as amputations and diseases has become popular in the 21st century, with stories like that of Sudarshan Gautam, a man with no arms who made it to the top in 2013. A teenager with Down's syndrome made it to Base camp, which has become a substitute for more extreme record-breaking because it carries many of the same thrills including the trip to the Himalayas and rustic scenery. Danger lurks even at base camp though, which was the site where dozens were killed in the 2015 Mount Everest avalanches. Others that have climbed Everest with amputations include Mark Inglis (no legs), Paul Hockey (one arm only), and Arunima Sinha (one leg only).


title: Mount Everest

text: In 2021, Nepal banned three Indians for faking an ascent of Mount Everest in 2016. In 2017, two Indian police officers, supposedly the first couple to ascend Mount Everest, were sacked once it was found they had faked their ascent.


title: Mount Everest

text: Lucy, Lady Houston, a British millionaire former showgirl, funded the Houston Everest Flight of 1933. A formation of airplanes led by the Marquess of Clydesdale flew over the summit in an effort to photograph the unknown terrain.


title: Mount Everest

text: On 26 September 1988, having climbed the mountain via the south-east ridge, Jean-Marc Boivin made the first paraglider descent of Everest, in the process creating the record for the fastest descent of the mountain and the highest paraglider flight. Boivin said: "I was tired when I reached the top because I had broken much of the trail, and to run at this altitude was quite hard." Boivin ran from below the summit on 40-degree slopes to launch his paraglider, reaching Camp II at in 12 minutes (some sources say 11 minutes). Boivin would not repeat this feat, as he was killed two years later in 1990, BASE-jumping off Venezuela's Angel Falls.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 1991 four men in two balloons achieved the first hot-air balloon flight over Mount Everest. In one balloon was Andy Elson and Eric Jones (cameraman), and in the other balloon Chris Dewhirst and Leo Dickinson (cameraman). Dickinson went on to write a book about the adventure called "Ballooning Over Everest". The hot-air balloons were modified to function at up to altitude. Reinhold Messner called one of Dickinson's panoramic views of Everest, captured on the now discontinued Kodak Kodachrome film, the "best snap on Earth", according to UK newspaper "The Telegraph". Dewhirst has offered to take passengers on a repeat of this feat for US$2.6 million per passenger.


title: Mount Everest

text: In May 2005, pilot Didier Delsalle of France landed a Eurocopter AS350 B3 helicopter on the summit of Mount Everest. He needed to land for two minutes to set the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) official record, but he stayed for about four minutes, twice. In this type of landing the rotors stay engaged, which avoids relying on the snow to fully support the aircraft. The flight set rotorcraft world records, for highest of both landing and take-off.


title: Mount Everest

text: Some press reports suggested that the report of the summit landing was a misunderstanding of a South Col landing, but he had also landed on South Col two days earlier, with this landing and the Everest records confirmed by the FAI. Delsalle also rescued two Japanese climbers at while he was there. One climber noted that the new record meant a better chance of rescue.


title: Mount Everest

text: On 21 May 2011, Nepalis Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa and Sano Bapu Sunuwar paraglided from Everest's summit to Namche Bazaar in 42 minutes. After the flight they hiked, biked, and kayaked to the Indian Ocean, reaching the Bay of Bengal by 27 June 2011, thereby becoming the first persons to complete a continuous summit-to-sea descent from Everest. They accomplished the ground-breaking feat despite Bapu having never previously climbed, and Lakpa having never kayaked and not even knowing how to swim. The duo subsequently won National Geographic Adventurers of the Year for 2012 for their exploits. In 2013 footage of the flight was shown on the television news program "Nightline".


title: Mount Everest

text: In 2014, a team financed and led by mountaineer Wang Jing used a helicopter to fly from South base camp to Camp 2 to avoid the Khumbu Icefall, and thence climbed to the Everest summit. This climb immediately sparked outrage and controversy in much of the mountaineering world over the legitimacy and propriety of her climb. Nepal ended up investigating Wang, who initially denied the claim that she had flown to Camp 2, admitting only that some support crew were flown to that higher camp, over the Khumbu Icefall. In August 2014, however, she stated that she had flown to Camp 2 because the icefall was impassable. "If you don't fly to Camp II, you just go home," she said in an interview. In that same interview, she also insisted that she had never tried to hide this fact.


title: Mount Everest

text: Her team had had to use the south side because the Chinese had denied them a permit to climb. Ultimately, the Chinese refusal may have been beneficial to Nepal's interests, allowing the government to showcase improved local hospitals and provided the opportunity for a new hybrid aviation/mountaineering style, triggering discussions about helicopter use in the mountaineering world. National Geographic noted that a village festooned Wang with honours after she donated US$30,000 to the town's hospital. Wang won the International Mountaineer of the Year Award from the Nepal government in June 2014.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 2016 the increased use of helicopters was noted for increased efficiency and for hauling material over the deadly Khumbu icefall. In particular it was noted that flights saved icefall porters 80 trips but still increased commercial activity at Everest. After many Nepalis died in the icefall in 2014, the government had wanted helicopters to handle more transportation to Camp 1 but this was not possible because of the 2015 deaths and earthquake closing the mountain, so this was then implemented in 2016 (helicopters did prove instrumental in rescuing many people in 2015 though). That summer Bell tested the 412EPI, which conducted a series of tests including hovering at and flying as high as altitude near Mount Everest.


title: Mount Everest

text: According to Jon Krakauer, the era of commercialisation of Everest started in 1985, when the summit was reached by a guided expedition led by David Breashears that included Richard Bass, a wealthy 55-year-old businessman and an amateur mountain climber with only four years of climbing experience. By the early-1990s, several companies were offering guided tours to the mountain. Rob Hall, one of the mountaineers who died in the 1996 disaster, had successfully guided 39 clients to the summit before that incident.


title: Mount Everest

text: By 2016, most guiding services cost between US$35,000 and US$200,000. Going with a "celebrity guide", usually a well-known mountaineer typically with decades of climbing experience and perhaps several Everest summits, can cost over £100,000 as of 2015. However, the services offered vary widely and it is "buyer beware" when doing deals in Nepal, one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Tourism contributed 7.9 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 in a country with high unemployment, but Everest is special in that an Everest porter can make nearly double the nation's average wage in a region in which other sources of income are lacking.


title: Mount Everest

text: Costs beyond the guiding service can vary widely. It is technically possible to reach the summit with minimal additional expenses, and there are "budget" travel agencies that offer logistical support for such trips. A limited support service, offering only some meals at base camp and bureaucratic overhead like a permit, can cost as little as US$7,000 as of 2007. However, this is considered difficult and dangerous (as illustrated by the case of David Sharp).


title: Mount Everest

text: Climbing gear required to reach the summit may cost in excess of US$8,000, and most climbers also use bottled oxygen, which adds around US$3,000. The permit to enter the Everest area from the south via Nepal costs US$10,000 to US$30,000 per person, depending on the size of the team. The ascent typically starts at one of the two base camps near the mountain, both of which are approximately from Kathmandu and from Lhasa (the two nearest cities with major airports). Transferring one's equipment from the airport to the base camp may add as much as US$2,000.


title: Mount Everest

text: Many climbers hire "full service" guide companies, which provide a wide spectrum of services, including the acquisition of permits, transportation to/from base camp, food, tents, fixed ropes, medical assistance while on the mountain, an experienced mountaineer guide, and even personal porters to carry one's backpack and cook one's meals. The cost of such a guide service may range from US$40,000 to $80,000 per person. Since most equipment is moved by Sherpas, clients of full-service guide companies can often keep their backpack weights under , or hire a Sherpa to carry their backpack for them. By contrast, climbers attempting less commercialised peaks, like Denali, are often expected to carry backpacks over and, occasionally, to tow a sled with of gear and food.


title: Mount Everest

text: The degree of commercialisation of Mount Everest is a frequent subject of criticism. Jamling Tenzing Norgay, the son of Tenzing Norgay, said in a 2003 interview that his late father would have been shocked to discover that rich thrill-seekers with no climbing experience were now routinely reaching the summit, "You still have to climb this mountain yourself with your feet. But the spirit of adventure is not there any more. It is lost. There are people going up there who have no idea how to put on crampons. They are climbing because they have paid someone $65,000. It is very selfish. It endangers the lives of others."


title: Mount Everest

text: One example of this is Shriya Shah-Klorfine, who had to be taught how to put on crampons during her summit attempt in 2012. She paid at least US$40,000 to a new guiding company for the trip, and died when she ran out of oxygen during the descent after climbing for 27 hours straight.


title: Mount Everest

text: Reinhold Messner concurred in 2004, "You could die in each climb and that meant you were responsible for yourself. We were real mountaineers: careful, aware and even afraid. By climbing mountains we were not learning how big we were. We were finding out how breakable, how weak and how full of fear we are. You can only get this if you expose yourself to high danger. I have always said that a mountain without danger is not a mountain...High altitude alpinism has become tourism and show. These commercial trips to Everest, they are still dangerous. But the guides and organisers tell clients, 'Don't worry, it's all organised.' The route is prepared by hundreds of Sherpas. Extra oxygen is available in all camps, right up to the summit. People will cook for you and lay out your beds. Clients feel safe and don't care about the risks."


title: Mount Everest

text: By 2015, Nepal was considering to require that climbers have some experience and wanted to make the mountain safer, and especially increase revenue. One barrier to this is that low-budget firms make money "not" taking inexperienced climbers to the summit. Those turned away by Western firms can often find another firm willing to take them for a price — that they return home soon after arriving after base camp, or part way up the mountain. Whereas a Western firm will convince those they deem incapable to turn back, other firms simply give people the freedom to choose.


title: Mount Everest

text: However, not all opinions on the subject among prominent mountaineers have been strictly negative. For example, Edmund Hillary stated in 2003 that while "Having people pay $65,000 and then be led up the mountain by a couple of experienced guides...isn't really mountaineering at all", he was pleased by the changes brought to Everest area by Westerners, "I don't have any regrets because I worked very hard indeed to improve the condition for the local people. When we first went in there they didn't have any schools, they didn't have any medical facilities, all over the years we have established 27 schools, we have two hospitals and a dozen medical clinics and then we've built bridges over wild mountain rivers and put in fresh water pipelines so in cooperation with the Sherpas we've done a lot to benefit them."


title: Mount Everest

text: One of the early guided summiters, Richard Bass (of Seven Summits fame) stated in 2003 that "Climbers should have high altitude experience before they attempt the really big mountains. People don't realise the difference between a mountain and . It's not just arithmetic. The reduction of oxygen in the air is proportionate to the altitude alright, but the effect on the human body is disproportionate—an exponential curve. People climb Denali [] or Aconcagua [] and think, 'Heck, I feel great up here, I'm going to try Everest.' But it's not like that."


title: Mount Everest

text: Some climbers have reported life-threatening thefts from supply caches. In May 2006, Vitor Negrete, the first Brazilian to climb Everest without oxygen and part of David Sharp's party, died during his descent, and theft of gear and food from his high-altitude camp may have contributed.


title: Mount Everest

text: "Several members were bullied, gear was stolen, and threats were made against me and my climbing partner, Michael Kodas, making an already stressful situation even more dire", said one climber.


title: Mount Everest

text: In addition to theft, Michael Kodas describes in his book, "High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed" (2008): unethical guides and Sherpas, prostitution and gambling at the Tibet Base Camp, fraud related to the sale of oxygen bottles, and climbers collecting donations under the pretense of removing trash from the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: The Chinese side of Everest in Tibet was described as "out of control" in 2007 after one Canadian had all his gear stolen and was abandoned by his Sherpa. Another Sherpa helped the victim get off the mountain safely and gave him some spare gear. Other climbers have also reported missing oxygen bottles, which can be worth hundreds of dollars each. Hundreds of climbers pass by people's tents, making it hard to safeguard against theft. In the late 2010s, the reports of theft of oxygen bottles from camps became more common.


title: Mount Everest

text: On 18 April 2014, in one of the worst disasters to ever hit the Everest climbing community up to that time, 16 Sherpas died in Nepal due to the avalanche that swept them off Mount Everest. In response to the tragedy, numerous Sherpa climbing guides walked off the job and most climbing companies pulled out in respect for the Sherpa people mourning the loss. Some still wanted to climb but there was too much controversy to continue that year. One of the issues that triggered the work action by Sherpas was unreasonable client demands during climbs.


title: Mount Everest

text: Mount Everest has been host to other winter sports and adventuring besides mountaineering, including snowboarding, skiing, paragliding, and BASE jumping.


title: Mount Everest

text: Yuichiro Miura became the first man to ski down Everest in the 1970s. He descended nearly from the South Col before falling with extreme injuries. Stefan Gatt and Marco Siffredi snowboarded Mount Everest in 2001. Other Everest skiers include Davo Karničar of Slovenia, who completed a top to south base camp descent in 2000, Hans Kammerlander of Italy in 1996 on the north side, and Kit DesLauriers of the United States in 2006. In 2006 Swede Tomas Olsson and Norwegian Tormod Granheim skied together down the north face. Olsson's anchor broke while they were rappelling down a cliff in the Norton couloir at about 8,500 metres, resulting in his death from a two and a half-kilometre fall. Granheim skied down to camp III. Also, Marco Siffredi died in 2002 on his second snow-boarding expedition.


title: Mount Everest

text: Various types of gliding descents have slowly become more popular, and are noted for their rapid descents to lower camps. In 1986 Steve McKinney led an expedition to Mount Everest, during which he became the first person to fly a hang-glider off the mountain. Frenchman Jean-Marc Boivin made the first paraglider descent of Everest in September 1988, descending in minutes from the south-east ridge to a lower camp. In 2011, two Nepalis made a gliding descent from the Everest summit down in 45 minutes. On 5 May 2013, the beverage company Red Bull sponsored Valery Rozov, who successfully BASE jumped off of the mountain while wearing a wingsuit, setting a record for world's highest BASE jump in the process.


title: Mount Everest

text: The southern part of Mount Everest is regarded as one of several "hidden valleys" of refuge designated by Padmasambhava, a ninth-century "lotus-born" Buddhist saint.


title: Mount Everest

text: Near the base of the north side of Everest lies Rongbuk Monastery, which has been called the "sacred threshold to Mount Everest, with the most dramatic views of the world." For Sherpas living on the slopes of Everest in the Khumbu region of Nepal, Rongbuk Monastery is an important pilgrimage site, accessed in a few days of travel across the Himalayas through Nangpa La.


title: Mount Everest

text: Miyolangsangma, a Tibetan Buddhist ""Goddess of Inexhaustible Giving"", is believed to have lived at the top of Mount Everest. According to Sherpa Buddhist monks, Mount Everest is Miyolangsangma's palace and playground, and all climbers are only partially welcome guests, having arrived without invitation.


title: Mount Everest

text: The Sherpa people also believe that Mount Everest and its flanks are blessed with spiritual energy, and one should show reverence when passing through this sacred landscape. Here, the karmic effects of one's actions are magnified, and impure thoughts are best avoided.


title: Mount Everest

text: In 2015, the president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association warned that pollution, especially human waste, has reached critical levels. As much as of human excrement each season is left behind on the mountain. Human waste is strewn across the verges of the route to the summit, making the four sleeping areas on the route up Everest's south side minefields of human excrement. Climbers above Base Camp—for the 62-year history of climbing on the mountain—have most commonly either buried their excrement in holes they dug by hand in the snow, or slung it into crevasses, or simply defecated wherever convenient, often within metres of their tents. The only place where climbers can defecate without worrying about contaminating the mountain is Base Camp. At approximately , Base Camp sees the most activity of all camps on Everest because climbers acclimate and rest there. In the late-1990s, expeditions began using toilets that they fashioned from blue plastic barrels fitted with a toilet seat and enclosed.


title: Mount Everest

text: The problem of human waste is compounded by the presence of more anodyne waste: spent oxygen tanks, abandoned tents, empty cans and bottles. The Nepali government now requires each climber to pack out eight kilograms of waste when descending the mountain.


title: Mount Everest

text: In February 2019, due to the mounting waste problem, China closed the base camp on its side of Everest to visitors without climbing permits. Tourists are allowed to go as far as the Rongbuk Monastery.


title: Mount Everest

text: In April 2019, the Solukhumbu district's Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality launched a campaign to collect nearly 10,000 kg of garbage from Everest.


title: Mount Everest

text: Nearby peaks include Lhotse, ; Nuptse, , and Changtse, among others. Another nearby peak is Khumbutse, and many of the highest mountains in the world are near Mount Everest. On the southwest side, a major feature in the lower areas is the Khumbu icefall and glacier, an obstacle to climbers on those routes but also to the base camps.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Anthony Michael Bourdain (; June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018) was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian who starred in programs focusing on the exploration of international culture, cuisine, and the human condition. Bourdain was a 1978 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of many professional kitchens during his career, which included several years spent as an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan. He first became known for his bestselling book "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly" (2000).


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain's first food and world-travel television show "A Cook's Tour" ran for 35 episodes on the Food Network in 2002 and 2003. In 2005, he began hosting the Travel Channel's culinary and cultural adventure programs "" (2005–2012) and "The Layover" (2011–2013). In 2013, he began a three-season run as a judge on "The Taste" and consequently switched his travelogue programming to CNN to host "". Although best known for his culinary writings and television presentations, along with several books on food and cooking and travel adventures, Bourdain also wrote both fiction and historical nonfiction. On June 8, 2018, Bourdain died by suicide while on location in France, filming for "Parts Unknown".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Anthony Michael Bourdain was born in Manhattan on June 25, 1956. His mother was Gladys (née Sacksman), and his father was Pierre Bourdain (1929–1987). His younger brother, Christopher, was born a few years later. Anthony grew up living with both of his parents and described his childhood in one of his books: "I did not want for love or attention. My parents loved me. Neither of them drank to excess. Nobody beat me. God was never mentioned so I was annoyed by neither church nor any notion of sin or damnation." His father was Catholic and his mother Jewish. Bourdain stated that, although he was considered Jewish by halacha's definition, "I've never been in a synagogue. I don't believe in a higher power. But that doesn't make me any less Jewish I don't think." His family was not religious either. At the time of Bourdain's birth, Pierre was a salesman at a New York City camera store, as well as a floor manager at a record store. He later became an executive for Columbia Records, and Gladys was a staff editor at "The New York Times".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain's paternal grandparents were French (his great grandfather Aurelien Bourdain was born in Brazil to French parents); his paternal grandfather Pierre Michel Bourdain (1905 1932) emigrated from Arcachon to New York following World War I. Bourdain's father spent summers in France as a boy and grew up speaking French. Bourdain spent most of his childhood in Leonia, New Jersey. He felt jealous of the lack of parental supervision of his classmates and the freedom they had in their homes. In his youth, Bourdain was a member of the Boy Scouts of America.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain's love of food was kindled in his youth while on a family vacation in France when he tried his first oyster from a fisherman's boat. He graduated from the Dwight-Englewood School—an independent coeducational college-preparatory day school in Englewood, New Jersey—in 1973, then enrolled at Vassar College but dropped out after two years. He worked at seafood restaurants in Provincetown, Massachusetts, while attending Vassar, which inspired his decision to pursue cooking as a career.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain attended The Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 1978. From there he went on to run various restaurant kitchens in New York City, including the Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue and Sullivan's.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In 1998, Bourdain became an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles. Based in Manhattan, at the time the brand had additional restaurants in Miami, Washington, D.C. and Tokyo. Bourdain remained an executive chef there for many years and even when no longer formally employed at Les Halles, he maintained a relationship with the restaurant, which described him in January 2014 as their "chef at large". Les Halles closed in 2017 after filing for bankruptcy.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In the mid-1980s, Bourdain began submitting unsolicited work for publication to "Between C & D", a literary magazine of the Lower East Side. The magazine eventually published a piece that Bourdain had written about a chef who was trying to purchase heroin in the Lower East Side. In 1985, Bourdain signed up for a writing workshop with Gordon Lish. In 1990, Bourdain received a small book advance from Random House, after meeting a Random House editor.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: His first book, a culinary mystery "Bone in the Throat", was published in 1995. He paid for his own book tour, but he did not find success. His second mystery book, "Gone Bamboo," also performed poorly in sales.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: "" is a 2000 "New York Times" bestseller, was an expansion of his 1999 "New Yorker" article "Don't Eat Before Reading This".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: He wrote two more bestselling nonfiction books: "A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines" (2001), an account of his food and travel exploits around the world, written in conjunction with his first television series of the same title.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In 2006, Bourdain published "The Nasty Bits", a collection of 37 exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays, many of them centered around food, and organized into sections named for each of the five traditional flavors, followed by a 30-page fiction piece ("A Chef's Christmas").


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain published a hypothetical historical investigation, "", about Mary Mallon, an Irish-born cook believed to have infected 53 people with typhoid fever between 1907 and 1938.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In 2007, Bourdain published "", covering the experiences of filming and photographs of the three first seasons of the show and his crew at work while filming the series.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: His articles and essays appeared in many publications, including in "The New Yorker", "The New York Times", "The Times" of the "Los Angeles Times", "The Observer", "Gourmet", "Maxim", and "Esquire". "Scotland on Sunday", "The Face", "Food Arts", "Limb by Limb", "BlackBook", "The Independent", "Best Life", the "Financial Times", and "Town & Country". His blog for the third season of "Top Chef" was nominated for a Webby Award for Best Blog (in the Cultural/Personal category) in 2008.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In 2012, Bourdain co-wrote the original graphic novel "Get Jiro!" along with Joel Rose, with art by Langdon Foss.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In 2015, Bourdain joined the travel, food, and politics publication Roads & Kingdoms as the site's sole investor and editor-at-large. Over the next several years, Bourdain contributed to the site and edited the Dispatched By Bourdain series. Bourdain and Roads & Kingdoms also partnered on the digital series Explore Parts Unknown, which launched in 2017 and won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series in 2018.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain hosted many food and travel series, including his first show, "A Cook's Tour" (2002 to 2003). He worked for The Travel Channel from 2005 to 2013. He also worked for CNN from 2013 to 2018. Bourdain described the concept as, "I travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want". Nigella Lawson noted that Bourdain had an "incredibly beautiful style when he talks that ranges from erudite to brilliantly slangy".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: The acclaim surrounding Bourdain's memoir "Kitchen Confidential" led to an offer by the Food Network for him to host his own food and world-travel show, "A Cook's Tour", which premiered in January 2002. It ran for 35 episodes, through 2003.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In July 2005, he premiered a new, somewhat similar television series, "", on the Travel Channel. As a further result of the immense popularity of "Kitchen Confidential", the Fox sitcom "Kitchen Confidential" aired in 2005, in which the character Jack Bourdain is based loosely on Anthony Bourdain's biography and persona.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In July 2006, he and his crew were in Beirut filming an episode of "No Reservations" when the Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out unexpectedly after the crew had filmed only a few hours of footage. His producers compiled behind-the-scenes footage of him and his production staff, including not only their initial attempts to film the episode, but also their firsthand encounters with Hezbollah supporters, their days of waiting for news with other expatriates in a Beirut hotel, and their eventual escape aided by a "fixer" (unseen in the footage), whom Bourdain dubbed "Mr. Wolf" after Harvey Keitel's character in "Pulp Fiction". Bourdain and his crew were finally evacuated with other American citizens, on the morning of July 20, by the United States Marine Corps. The Beirut "No Reservations" episode, which aired on August 21, 2006, was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2007.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In July 2011, the Travel Channel announced adding a second one-hour, 10-episode Bourdain show to be titled "The Layover", which premiered November 21, 2011. Each episode featured an exploration of a city that can be undertaken within an air travel layover of 24 to 48 hours. The series ran for 20 episodes, through February 2013. Bourdain executive produced a similar show hosted by celebrities called "The Getaway", which lasted two seasons on Esquire Network.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In May 2012, Bourdain announced that he was leaving the Travel Channel. In December, he explained on his blog that his departure was due to his frustration with the channel's new ownership using his voice and image to make it seem as if he were endorsing a car brand, and the channel's creating three "special episodes" consisting solely of clips from the seven official episodes of that season. He went on to host "" for CNN. The program focused on other cuisines, cultures and politics and premiered on April 14, 2013.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: President Barack Obama was featured on the program in an episode filmed in Vietnam that aired in September 2016; the two talked over a beer and bun cha at a small restaurant in Hanoi. The show was filmed and is set in places as diverse as Libya, Tokyo, the Punjab region, Jamaica, Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Far West Texas and Armenia.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Between 2012 and 2017, he served as narrator and executive producer for several episodes of the award-winning PBS series "The Mind of a Chef"; it aired on the last months of each year. The series moved from PBS to Facebook Watch in 2017.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: From 2013 to 2015 he was an executive producer and appeared as a judge and mentor in ABC's cooking-competition show "The Taste". He earned an Emmy nomination for each season.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain appeared five times as guest judge on Bravo's "Top Chef" reality cooking competition program.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: His second appearance was in the first episode of Season 3 in June 2007 judging the "exotic surf and turf" competition that featured ingredients including abalone, alligator, black chicken, geoduck and eel.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: His third appearance was also in Season 3, as an expert on air travel, judging the competitors' airplane meals. He also wrote weekly blog commentaries for many of the Season 3 episodes, filling in as a guest blogger while "Top Chef" judge Tom Colicchio was busy opening a new restaurant.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: He next appeared as a guest judge for the opening episode of Season 4, in which pairs of chefs competed head-to-head in the preparation of various classic dishes, and again in the Season 4 Restaurant Wars episode, temporarily taking the place of head judge Tom Colicchio, who was at a charity event. He appeared as a guest judge in episode 12 of (Season 7), where he judged the cheftestants' meals they made for NASA.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: He made a guest appearance on the August 6, 2007 New York City episode of "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern", and Zimmern himself appeared as a guest on the New York City episode of Bourdain's "No Reservations" airing the same day. On October 20, 2008, Bourdain hosted a special, "At the Table with Anthony Bourdain", on the Travel Channel.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain appeared in an episode of TLC's reality show "Miami Ink", aired on August 28, 2006, in which artist Chris Garver tattooed a skull on his right shoulder. Bourdain, who noted it was his fourth tattoo, said that one reason for the skull was that he wished to balance the ouroboros tattoo he had inked on his opposite shoulder in Malaysia, while filming "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In 2010, he appeared on Nick Jr.'s "Yo Gabba Gabba!" as Dr. Tony, part of which was included in the movie "Roadrunner".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In 2011, he voiced himself in a cameo on an episode of "The Simpsons" titled "The Food Wife", in which Marge, Lisa, and Bart start a food blog called "The Three Mouthkateers".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: He appeared in a 2013 episode of the animated series "Archer" (S04E07), voicing chef Lance Casteau, a parody of himself. In 2015, he voiced a fictionalized version of himself on an episode of "Sanjay and Craig" titled "Snake Parts Unknown".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: From 2015 to 2017, Bourdain hosted "Raw Craft", a series of short videos released on YouTube. The series followed Bourdain as he visited various artisans who produce various craft items by hand, including iron skillets, suits, saxophones, and kitchen knives. The series was produced by William Grant & Sons to promote their Balvenie distillery's products.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In September 2011, Ecco Press announced that Bourdain would have his own publishing line, Anthony Bourdain Books, which included acquiring between three and five titles per year that "reflect his remarkably eclectic tastes". The first books that the imprint published, released in 2013, include "L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food" by Roy Choi, Tien Nguyen, and Natasha Phan, "Prophets of Smoked Meat" by Daniel Vaughn, and "Pain Don't Hurt" by Mark Miller. Bourdain also announced plans to publish a book by Marilyn Hagerty.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: In describing the line, he said, "This will be a line of books for people with strong voices who are at something—who speak with authority. Discern nothing from this initial list—other than a general affection for people who cook food and like food. The ability to kick people in the head is just as compelling to us—as long as that's coupled with an ability to vividly describe the experience. We are just as intent on crossing genres as we are enthusiastic about our first three authors. It only gets weirder from here."


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Shortly after Bourdain's death, HarperCollins announced that the publishing line would be shut down after the remaining works under contract were published.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain appeared as himself in the 2015 film "The Big Short", in which he used seafood stew as an analogy for a collateralized debt obligation. He also produced and starred in "Wasted! The Story of Food Waste".


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Drew Magary, in a column for "GQ" published on the day of Bourdain's death, reflected that Bourdain was heir in spirit to Hunter S. Thompson. "Smithsonian" magazine declared Bourdain "the original rock star" of the culinary world, while his public persona was characterized by "Gothamist" as "culinary bad boy". Due to his liberal use of profanity and sexual references in his television show "No Reservations", the network added viewer-discretion advisories to each episode.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain was known for consuming exotic local specialty dishes, having eaten black-colored blood sausages called (lit. "black sausage") in Finland and also "sheep testicles in Morocco, ant eggs in Puebla, Mexico, a raw seal eyeball as part of a traditional Inuit seal hunt, and an entire cobra—beating heart, blood, bile, and meat—in Vietnam". Bourdain was quoted as saying that a Chicken McNugget was the most disgusting thing he ever ate, but he was fond of Popeyes chicken. He also declared that the unwashed warthog rectum he ate in Namibia was "the worst meal of [his] life", along with the fermented shark he ate in Iceland.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain was noted for his put-downs of celebrity chefs, such as Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Sandra Lee, and Rachael Ray, and appeared irritated by both the overt commercialism of the celebrity cooking industry and its lack of culinary authenticity. He voiced a "serious disdain for food demigods like Alan Richman, Alice Waters, and Alain Ducasse." Bourdain recognized the irony of his transformation into a celebrity chef and began to qualify his insults; in the 2007 New Orleans episode of "No Reservations", he reconciled with Emeril Lagasse, whom he had previously disparaged in "Kitchen Confidential". He later wrote more favourably of Lagasse in the preface of the 2013 edition. He was outspoken in his praise for chefs he admired, particularly Ferran Adrià, Juan Mari Arzak, Fergus Henderson, José Andrés, Thomas Keller, Martin Picard, Éric Ripert, and Marco Pierre White, as well as his former protégé and colleagues at Brasserie Les Halles. He spoke very highly of Julia Child's influence on him.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain was known for his sarcastic comments about vegan and vegetarian activists, considering their lifestyle "rude" to the inhabitants of many countries he visited. He considered vegetarianism, except in the case of religious exemptions, a "First World luxury". However, he also believed that Americans eat too much meat, and admired vegetarians and vegans who put aside their beliefs when visiting different cultures in order to be respectful of their hosts.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: Bourdain's book "The Nasty Bits" is dedicated to "Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee" of the Ramones. He declared fond appreciation for their music, as well that of other early punk bands such as Dead Boys and The Voidoids. He said that the playing of music by Billy Joel, Elton John, or the Grateful Dead in his kitchen was grounds for firing. Joel was a fan of Bourdain's, and visited the restaurant.


title: Anthony Bourdain

text: On "No Reservations" and "Parts Unknown", he dined with and interviewed many musicians, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, with a special focus on glam and punk rockers such as Alice Cooper, David Johansen, Marky Ramone and Iggy Pop. He featured contemporary band Queens of the Stone Age on "No Reservations" several times, and they composed and performed the theme song for "Parts Unknown".