The Māori flag flies high at the top of the world Mt Everest.
The Māori flag flies high at the top of the world Mt Everest.
Everest: Superhuman achievement or package holiday on a rope? Author Will Cockrelldispels the mountain’s biggest myths in his new book on how Everest was opened up to paying tourists by Kiwi mountaineers
New Zealand is the only country in the world with an Everest mountaineer on its bank notes.
The portrait of Sir Edmund Hillary on top of the world looms large in the imagination whenever Everest is mentioned. Else, it’s the mountain guide Rob Hall, whose final moments were immortalised in the definitive book on Everest, Into Thin Air.
“What’s happening on Everest now, and even by the 80s and 90s when my story begins, these are the kind of expeditions that would have Edmund Hillary spinning in his grave.”
The death knell of the romantic myth of explorers alone on Everest came in 2019, the year of the ‘Everest traffic jam’ photographs.
More than 70 mountaineers were shown queuing for the summit like chipolatas on a string. It was clear that Everest was no longer a solo pursuit. It was an industry.
Cockrell’s book Everest Inc. is the story of how the sausage factory was made. And it might be far more interesting for it.
The book is about “the minute it stopped being a mountaineering challenge and started becoming a guiding challenge”.
A long queue of mountain climbers line a path on Mount Everest May 22, 2019. Nirmal Purja/@Nimsdai Project Possible via AP
The veteran American outdoors reporter has documented the changes over 25 seasons on the mountains. Covering tragedies, records and oddities from mountaineering’s highest trophy. However, it was only while interviewing the guides, peddling the promise of getting paying clients to the top of the world that the real story emerged.
Everest Inc. charts the rise of client-funded expeditions.
It’s a model of climbing that Sir Ed wrote off as “sitting around in a big base camp, knocking back cans of beer”, and not mountaineering.
However, there were plenty of New Zealanders who followed in Hillary’s steps, and made a business of it.
Two of the original big five expedition companies to take paying guests up were New Zealand-owned. Russell Brice’s company Himex might also have set a lesser known Kiwi record on the mountain: Everest’s first open bar.
United States guide Dave Hahn recalls in the book: “We often joked that if you visited Russell’s tent at the wrong time of day you could get really hammered by accident”.
Despite this reputation for hard partying - and another unflattering depiction of respected Wānaka mountain guide Guy Cotter performing monkey bars in the drinks tent - there was a new professionalism emerging among the former wild men of the mountain.
Cockrell says Brice in particular set “the blueprint” for what became the Everest guiding model.
“Going from a really talented climber who wants to climb Everest to a guide, who is responsible for bringing amateurs to the top of the mountain over and over and making sure they do it safely.”
By the time Brice retired in 2020 he had a reputation for being the safest operator in Nepal.
Everest Inc. author Will Cockrell at base camp.
How easy is it to climb Everest?
As the number of people who have climbed the mountain since the Hillary and Tenzing Norgay expedition approaches 12,000, not everyone will be climbers in the same league as Lydia Bradey or Reinhold Messner.
Non-record setting summits aren’t any less valuable than those “bought” by amateur climbers, Cockrell says. Climbs that sometimes cost tens of thousands of dollars.
“I think it’s a shame that there are purists who say those who cannot climb Everest a certain way should not be climbing.”
Decompression tents and high-altitude suits are adding to a trend making high altitude climbing faster and safer for your average dentist to explore their midlife fascination with mountaineering.
Taking two weeks rather than two months, companies like Furtenbach are selling “flash climbing” expeditions, for a cool US$80,000.
However, Cockrell says the myth of paying for a package holiday to the top of the world is not fair.
“I think it’s really important that we reframe that. Very few people got to Everest to be pulled up the mountain - the idea that people are sitting round base camp waiting to be carried up Everest by their team of sherpas, that’s a total complete myth.”
As a seasoned Everest reporter he is finely attuned to the myths and sensationalist stories that arise every climbing season. This year there was the claim that climbers would have to “poop in bag” because of the volume of detritus being left on the mountain.
“Human waste is not Everest’s biggest problem,” he says.
The lack of technical climbing and inclusion in the Seven Summits trophy mountains has led to Everest being named “the easiest of the 8000m climbs”.
It’s a distinction a bit like the “friendliest man-eating tiger”. Everything is relative, every climb has an associated risk.
Nimsfluencers and the rise of Nepalese-owned expeditions
One thing is for sure, Everest outfits are getting busier and more professional.
It’s no longer the cocktail of “renegades and rogues”, the book promises.
The climbers profiled include a former LSD drugs kingpin from the UK turned Everest profiteer, Henry Todd. But that chapter of climbing is now as much dated as the image of Tenzing and Hillary’s 1953 expedition.
“Henry Todd is such a throwback to a time when it was a little more pirate,” says Cockrell.
“I think it’s so exciting we’re entering a new era of Everest.”
Today it’s not New Zealanders running expeditions but Nepalis. About 90 per cent of climbing permits were issued to Nepalese expedition companies.
Like the air at the top of the famous maunga, the final part of the book thins out compared to the previous chapters. Perhaps because the rise of Nepalese-owned guiding company is such a recent phenomenon.
This image was posted on Nims Purja's social media along with the news that the rescue mission had been a success Photo / Instagram /Nimsdai
Since the pandemic, arguably the world’s best known big mountain climber is a Nepali, Nirmal “Nimsdai” Purja. His film 14 Peaks shot him and Nepal’s fledgling mountaineering industry to instant Netflix fame.
It was just the advert his company Elite Expeditions needed.
“He’s like a rock star over there. He rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but he’s a fascinating individual. You can’t take your eyes off his way of doing business.”
The social media savvy and immaculately dressed guides have earned them the name “Nimsfulencers”.
As Cotter says in the book, being with the Nepali outfit “feels like it’s being led by a boy band”.
There is a level of showboating and self-promotion that irks some of the more established, Western operators at Everest.
Others are enthusiastic for what Nimsdai has done for the profile of mountaineering in Nepal. After all, the Nepali porters have been leading Everest teams in all but name since the earliest expeditions.
Nimsdai refused to give an interview for the book.
Although Cockrell does interview many other Nepali guides and operators, including some of the 14 Peaks team, It feels like the old guard sensing the change in times.
Kiwi mountaineer Guy Cotter at the Khumbu Icefall, near Everest. Photo / Supplied
“The industry is unrecognisable now,” Cockrell says.
“I think it is destined to be a really well run, tight thriving [guiding] industry that Nepal can be really proud of … but the Nepalis are going through some growing pains.”
When asked if he would rather join a Western or Nepali expedition to climb Everest, surprisingly he says neither.
Despite many years as a mountain guide in America, and having visited Nepal’s Khumbu valley, Cockrell says it’s not for him.
“I’m pretty sure I will not climb Everest. Number one, I’m a father to two young girls and I’ve done so much climbing in my life, my cup is pretty full. I don’t need Everest for some sort of transformation.”
Everest attracts 1000 people a year, almost always their motive for climbing Everest is not about mountaineering.
“One of the biggest flaws about books on Everest [is] they’re written by people who have climbed it,” he says.
He says his book is not another “self-help book by the guy who climbed Everest”.
