Khumbu Icefall

To get, yeah

... through the valley, over base camp, and we clapped eyes on, on Everest, and looked up through the ice fall, the Khumbu Icefall, the Western Cwm, the South Summit, the neighboring faces of Lhotse and Nuptse.

And what was extraordinary was my first sight of Everest was with you.

Mm-hmm.

Can I say, you just should have seen how hard this guy worked.

There's a scene in the film where, um, and I could, I could- honestly, I, I, you know I could go on all day, but the most difficult, Pu Batashi and all the, all the great summiters of Everest will tell you, the most dangerous part of Everest is not the summit.

It's the Khumbu Icefall.

Yeah.

'Cause it is just, it's a little bit of walking up a hill sometimes.

Especially this year, I know the Khumbu Icefall wasn't that technical.

So I wanted to learn more.

I wanted to get more into the sport.

I was like, oh, I'd love to rest five days.

And then just how it all happened, the Kimball Icefall opened up the day after I got there and we went all the way around.

It was a late open this year, wasn't it? They had problems.

The ice doctors had a real problem trying to find a route up and switched it, I think, one side to the other.

But yeah, it was like I arrived at base camp.

I spent two days at base camp and then I was on rotation straight away.

When we talk about a Serac, we're talking about a multi-storey block of solid ice that has spent hundreds of years winding its way down the Western Quim and it is about to teeter down the most dangerous part of the climb in a way of Everest, the Coomber Icefall.

Going up there for the first time, there has to be a very tight butthole and a lot of apprehension going up there, doesn't it?

I mean, quite frankly, I was terrified watching you make your way back along the summit ridge.

But you mentioned that you reached Camp 2, which is at 6,500 metres, by I think about 8.30pm. You had to wait until morning to negotiate the Khumbu icefall.

Was the icefall

more frightening than skiing the summit ridge?

It's melting alarmingly fast, and it's making part, the most dangerous part of the climb from Nepal side really dangerous.

The Khumbu Icefall is now disintegrating, and last year was closed for a long period of time 'cause huge towers of ice were in danger of collapsing.

That's only gonna get worse, and there's serious thought, serious talk now of having to close that icefall altogether and find another route up the Nepal side of the mountain, which would be difficult.

So yeah, i- i- it's

But the thing that we rarely stop and think about is how those ladders got there in the first place.

Who looked at a crevasse in the Khumbu Icefall and decided where it could be crossed, and then carried an aluminum ladder up the mountain to bridge it? Who installed the ropes? Who went through the icefall before the commercial teams arrived, working out which parts looked relatively stable and which parts needed to be avoided? And when the glacier moved, a ladder slipped or a crevasse became wider overnight, who went back in and fixed it? Now, that job belongs to a small team of highly experienced climbers known as the Icefall Doctors.

It's ...

Now, it's a brilliant name really because that is effectively what they do.

They spend their Everest climbing season examining the Khumbu Icefall, diagnosing its problems, and trying to keep a route alive through a piece of terrain that is constantly changing.

The difference is that this particular patient is a collapsing glacier filled with crevasses, avalanches, and towers of ice that can fall without warning.

So today's episode is all about the Icefall Doctors, who they are, what they actually do, and why almost every climber attempting Everest from the Nepalese side depends on their work.

And I think it is worth saying from the start that this is not just another slightly unusual job on Everest.

So we planned extremely well for our expedition, and again, it comes from the team that we hired and the expertise of our guide who's done this many, many times.

So once you embarked from Base Camp on your way up, can you describe the Khumbu Icefall for people that have never heard of this? Explain why it's considered so dangerous, and then take us into that moment and what it was like for you to cross that.

So the most dangerous section of Everest is where you sleep at Base Camp.

It's right At the beginning of the Khumbu Icefall and then getting to camp one, 'cause you have to climb through this, it's like a valley of ice, but it's constantly shifting and moving, and that's where a lot of accidents happen, right? If you ever seen photos of Everest or a movie where there's ladders going across crevasses, it's at the Khumbu Icefall.

And literally, when we went up to Khumbu and when we got back down, even during rotations and after summit, it looked completely different 'cause it's constantly shifting around.

Like, one wrong step and you're falling into a crevasse.

That could be it, and you sometimes you just don't know.

So you have to be extra careful and fast getting through some parts of the Khumbu Icefall.

OK, let's break down that exposure then.

The most notorious bottleneck on the South Call route is the Khumbu Icefall, right? Right above base camp.

Yes, the Khumbu Icefall.

It is terrifying.

From my understanding, it isn't just a steep glacier.

The summit is just the final step of a massive process.

Yes.

Those 32 summits represent hundreds of trips through the Khumbu Icefall.