Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Miscellaneous | September 24, 2026
Yup, it's that time of the year again, my friends: time to look at Mount Everest and how human arrogance is ruining everything. Climbing the world's tallest mountain was once the denizen of experienced climbers and the sherpas who did most of the work, but now, it's never been cheaper or more accessible for those bored rich people who are eager for some kind of emotion beyond ennui.
The 2026 season was the busiest in history, with over 1,000 successful summits on the Nepal side of the mountain (the Chinese side is harder and not so open to the public.) In May, 274 climbers reached the top in one day! Record numbers of permits were given by the Nepalese government, which is hugely dependent on the money brought in from these expeditions. Explorers Web says it brought in almost $7.2 million in revenue. And the Everest Industrial Complex has only grown bigger. As they note, "Logistics continue to improve, and there is a growing demand for accommodation outside Base Camp, air transport, and upgrades on every aspect of the climb, including Base Camp comfort." Because when I'm trying to prove my iron man status by climbing a summit that is constantly trying to kill me, I need to have Wi-Fi access.
But with this scale-up has come many problems. The local Sherpas are asking that the government tackle the problems of overcrowding. Traffic at the Hillary Step was extremely heavy on May 21, with long queues forming as climbers from multiple expedition teams waited for their turn to pass through the narrow section," said Miles Sherpa of Summit Force. "Our team spent nearly three hours crossing this area due to congestion and difficult movement conditions at high altitude. The image of a literal queue to the top of the world's tallest mountain is a surreal one, but it's the norm now for Everest. More and more inexperienced climbers are trying to make it to the top, and they're making massive mistakes that could kill them.
The Sherpas are bearing the brunt of it all too. This year, five people have died during the Everest season, three of them Nepalese. On June 1st, news spread that a Sherpa climber, Hillary Dawa, had been left behind above Camp 3, which is 22,300 feet (or 6.8km) high. No search and rescue operation was put in place to recover him. He was simply assumed dead, but mercifully, a week later, he was found, having managed to descend the mountain on his own. It was, as the Everest Chronicle noted, a massive screw-up that "exposed an Everest economy where a man nearly died because no one would fund a helicopter, while a handful of Sherpas prosper as oligarchs, and the poorest are treated as expendable labor."
Gelje Sherpa, one of the best-known Everest guides, has shared his suggested changes on Instagram, which include ensuring that every Sherpa have real guiding qualifications and that everyone undergo medical checks at Base Camp before being allowed to ascend.
And then there's the trash problem. Everest is littered with discarded equipment, tents, oxygen tanks, and waste because it's cheaper to leave it there than clean it up. Making matters worse is the pee problem. According to a new study, over 6,000 liters of urine has been spread across the mountain, leading to snow melt and contamination of the Nepalese populace's drinking water. Two years ago, authorities had to implement new rules that required climbers to carry their poo down the mountain because that was ruining everything. Did you know that poo decomposes very slowly at high altitudes, so it just sticks around for a long time up there? Now you do!
Maybe it's because I'm too poor and don't like going outdoors, but the allure of climbing Everest utterly eludes me. Why would you want to pay all that money to go up a mountain that is overcrowded with people, littered with both trash and actual corpses, then queue like you're at the bank to get to the top for 6 seconds? Humans are not meant to be that high off the ground. Once you get to a certain altitude, your body shuts down! You're forcing yourself in a race against your own brain to scuttle up this damn thing, and for what? So you can spoil the natural beauty of Nepal with your empty oxygen tanks and maybe your poo? What goes through your mind when you see the frozen body of someone who didn't make it, and you refer to them by a cutesy nickname so you can use them as a marker of your own success? I miss when rich people built museums or secret volcano layers.
