Icefall

Then they returned to Camp Muir, the climbing high camp, at 10,200 feet and reported the incident to climbing rangers.

A team of climbers searched the Nisqually, Icefall, and Gibraltar Chute area, and a Chinook helicopter flew climbing areas it seems possible he could have ended up in.

Climbing ranger Tom Payne and two mountain guides climbed to the summit looking for Eric on late Thursday, the day of the disappearance.

The day after, the search expanded, with more than 40 people involved.

Like when I started Alpenglow, I knew, y- you know, th- this is ultimately why we stopped guiding the south side of Mount Everest.

It was like, if I go through the Khumbu Icefall 50 times, I'm probably gonna survive, but if there's 5,000 trips through the Icefall of my staff members over 20 years of my career guiding on the mountain, there's no way we can avoid fatalities.

And so, like, I, I do think about those numbers a lot.

It's f- I, I think about that a lot with, uh, industrial rope access type stuff.

That doesn't mean that someone shouldn't still go and climb that route.

The same is true on the south side of Everest.

Individual climbers should, you know, probably love going through the Khumbu Icefall.

It's one of the coolest, like, mountain playground jungle gyms on the planet.