The Mountain of My Dreams

I have a confession: When I was a wee little teenager searching desperately for a way to validate my wee little life, I wanted to climb Mount Everest.

Shameful, I know! But I was just a kid. And this was back in the blissfully ignorant early 2000s, less than a decade removed from Jon Krakauer’s best-selling apology for the high-altitude mountaineering industry, and more than a decade before that ominously totalitarian moment when Ueli Steck (one of the great alpinists of the 21st century, RIP) was literally assaulted for daring to play around on the commercial South Col route on his own schedule, without a guide.

Back then, I knew nothing about the high-altitude traffic jams, the historically marginalized Sherpa guides, or the fact that the mountain’s once-somber basecamp was turned each spring into a litter-strewn amusement park where the prayer flags and pujas add exotic local color to such big-city features as constant helicopter traffic and drunken dance parties.

Nor did I know that bottled oxygen effectively drops a mountain’s experiential elevation to anywhere from 24,000 to 10,000 feet, depending on flow rates and exertion levels, which is why professional badasses like Ecuador’s Carla Perez, who’s done Everest with and without supplemental oxygen, publicly believe that “if you start with O2 at 6,500-meters, that is what you have climbed: a 6,500-meter mountain. … From a sporting point of view, an O2 climb is not valid.”

Luckily, I was cured of my Everest dreams when, at the ripe young age of 15, I excitedly revealed them to the sport climber friend who’d brought me to Rumney and taught me to tie a figure 8.

“Everest isn’t climbing, dude, it’s hiking,” he said, before promptly showing me what the real thing looked like by onsighting a fully bolted 5.11c.

(An overhang! Wow!)

Regardless of my embarrassing early-life ambitions, or perhaps because of them, I was delighted to find out that Everest’s Nepalese trade route—the South Col route—is finally where it has long deserved to be: on AllTrails, a very popular mapping app for hikers, mountain bikers, and OHV enthusiasts.

“Proceed cautiously on this 27.7-mile out-and-back trail near Khumjung, Province 1,” says the AllTrails description. “Generally considered a highly challenging route, it should only be attempted by experienced adventurers. This is a very popular area for backpacking, camping, and hiking, so you’ll likely encounter other people while exploring. The trail is open year-round and is beautiful to visit anytime.”

Year round! Who knew?

A Brief (But Important) Caveat

But before I bash Everest too much, let me acknowledge a few things. The mountain is quite big. And it’s quite steep. And its altitude is quite real. Several years ago, Cory Richards (the first American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter) told me that climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen is “a legit undertaking” and “a profound exercise in tenacity” even when attempted with the fixed ropes via the trade route. I trust him; he’s done it with and without oxygen, and he even timidly attempted a new route on the Northeast Face of the mountain. I’ve also read enough of those harrowing 1980s memoirs to know that even with supplemental oxygen, Everest is a dang serious endeavor when attempted from, say, the 11,000-foot Kangshung Face or the rarely repeated West Ridge and its famous variation, the Hornbein Couloir.

I also want to acknowledge that Everest is fascinating. My own father was drawn to it, attempting the mountain (with guides) back in 1991. I was raised on his stories, and I still occasionally stand in the hall outside my childhood bedroom and ponder the photograph of him standing on the wind-swept North Col. Even now, 33 years later, a quietly mystical lilt enters my dad’s voice when he talks about the expedition—and it’s a mysticism that I also recognized in the voice of Cory Richards when he told me that, for him, the mountain isn’t just a mountain, it’s an idea that “connects the planet in one singular point [and] transcends cultural differences and borders.”

So even though I’m a wee little sport climber, mockable in all ways, I still apply too much idealism to Everest to quietly accept the theme-park images that flow off the peak each spring season. Given the mountain’s understandable allure, I don’t want to begrudge people who want to go suck oxygen in high places, but I wish that their well-publicized “climbs” weren’t cheapening the accomplishments of the truly talented, die-hard alpinists who are still out there doing very cool new things on the world’s highest peaks—especially since the mainstream media seems to have so much trouble distinguishing between the two.

OK. I’m done.

Now to the Main Event

There are many wonderful things on Everest’s AllTrails page, including a conspicuous lack of summit photos and, to my amazement, some genuine-looking reviews. Alexander Pancoe, for instance, writes, “Summited May 23rd 2019. The culmination of 4 years of training both technically and physically. Went with Adventure Consultants. Amazing challenge physical and mental. Come prepared. Amazing. Challenging. Be prepared.”

Fair enough, Alex, if a little repetitive. Nicely done. Why Adventure Consultants over Furtenbach Adventures’s deluxe Signature Expedition package, may I ask? Was it the $215,000 fee? And did you consider Nims Purja’s outfit as a way of channeling more money into the local Sherpa economy? Oh, you thought Nims was a creep? Fair.

The 2021 summitter Susan Yao, meanwhile, writes that “previous climbs at extremely high altitude would be necessary,” even though a little bit of internet research suggests that she herself prepared for Everest on the not-so-extremely-high Denali (20,310ft) and Aconcagua (22,837ft). She usefully adds that, even though it’s “hard to think” in the Death Zone, prospective climbers nonetheless “need to know your limits [because] two people died on my summit day.”

Heavy stuff. But it’s good to remember that well-prepared people do die up there. (Just a few weeks ago, an unlucky guide and his client fell down the Kangshung Face after a combination of overcrowding and warm temperatures contributed to a cornice collapse on the summit ridge.)

For every Alex or Susan, however, there are ten or twenty delightfully irreverent forgeries, some of which, if taken seriously, would be very impressive. Jazz Man, for instance, says, “We dropped a car in Tibet and did this as a through hike, which added some drive time (252 hours). The trail down the North Face was not well marked, recommend downloading the AllTrails map. Great views and no bugs!”

Right on, Jazz Man! That’s impressive as heck. But you descended the North Face rather than the North Ridge? I’ll certainly not be following your GPS track. Also, did you know that was probably illegal? China has occupied the north side of the mountain since it invaded Tibet in 1950, and, because they can, the bureaucrats over there tend to withhold through-hiking permits. You should probably avoid traveling to China any time soon.

Toby Ugbele, meanwhile, didn’t enjoy the experience much. “Way too much snow,” he writes, and “don’t even get me started on the hills.” But the discerning reader starts to doubt that Toby has actually stood on top of the world when he complains about having “literally climbed the height of a passenger aircraft.” Because that’s a little misleading. Sure, the summit’s at 29,000 feet, so he might have climbed “to” that height; but unless you’re doing something actually impressive (a sea-to-summit climb), your total elevation gain, according to AllTrails, will be a mere 13,126 feet, not including, of course, acclimatization climbs.

Ugbele did appreciate the cafe at the summit, as do many other reviewers, though there’s confusion about whether it’s best classified as a cafe or a tea house. There’s also disagreement in the OHV community as to whether you can park your Prius at the South Summit or whether getting there requires a vehicle with all-wheel drive. Lots of hikers agree that microspikes are helpful, and some even urge the use of poles, though a sadistic minimalist named Matthew Cote claims he “did just fine” in his crocs and that the trail really ought to be rated “moderate to easy.”

Claims like this get less-fit reviewers all riled up. “NOT A BEGINNER HIKE!” Kimo Keltz exclaims. “The reviews on AllTrails was a LIE. I had a very hard time with this and spent too much money on it!”

Keltz’s might actually sounds like a real review except that, when reporting on conditions, he helpfully notes that there’s “No Shade,” which, duh, it’s the mountain’s southern aspect that we’re reviewing here, people. But the no shade thing comes up again and again. (My favorite is Jared McGee’s syntactically incoherent three-word masterpiece: “Two words: sunscreen.”)

Toby Ugbele isn’t the only one to feel a bit let down by the Everest experience. Joey Dann says it’s “overrated af,” but I get the sense he’s just trolling the people who paid for more expensive guiding services, since he goes on to speak warmly of the international community he found in the mountains.