Climbing Mount

Leo Dickinson is an action sports filmmaker who gets a thrill from working at extreme heights. As a parachutist and mountaineer, he has used is expertise in the Himalaya to organise sky-diving holidays over the range that can include an Everest Base Camp Trek. Whether he is jumping into a cave, off a mountain, or flying over it, Leo Dickinson will have a camera strapped to his hand or his head while he’s doing it.
Flying Over Everest
Together with his pilot Chris Dewhirst, Leo was on board the first successful balloon flight over Mt Everest (8848 m), in October of 1991. It had taken ten years of preparation for the team, and was quite an undertaking to get all the equipment up the trail. They were keen to avoid the fate of the Japanese balloon pilots who attempted it the year before. That attempt had ended with a crash and a fire, and one of the pilots was forced to descend to Everest Base Camp looking for help while the other two sheltered under their parachutes.
But with the help of Meteorologists, Leo Dickinson’s balloon was successful. They took off from Gokyo, (4750m) which is a village in Nepal at a height just 610 meters lower than climbers begin their expeditions from Everest Base Camp. The route of the balloons utilised the power of the jet stream to move them over the peak, a tactic which earned them a feature of the recent BBC documentary “The Jet Stream and Us”.
As they approached Everest, Leo was worried that the burners might not be powerful enough to clear the mountain, and when the jet stream took hold of his balloon he said it was “almost like a hand pushing the basket and shaking it.” He described what he saw as he passed over the peak – and what he filmed – as “quite humbling.”
Extreme Canoeing
But Leo’s association with the mountain goes back even further. In 1976, he made a film called “Dudh Kosi – Canoeing Down Everest”, chronicling the pioneering journey of some British canoeists who took their kayaks down the Dudh Kosi river. The Dudh Kosi draws its freezing waters from the Tsholo Lake at 4555 metres altitude, which is just 800 meters shy of the Everest Base Camp on the Nepali side. The film captures the dangers involved in paddling down unusually steep rapids; it’s such an exciting white water challenge that adventurers have since duplicated the journey Leo filmed.
Filming the Impossible
Two years later Leo brought his camera back to the Himalaya to capture the events of a record breaking climb. European mountaineers Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first humans to climb Mount Everest without carrying supplementary oxygen. Leo’s film called “Unmasked” follows their trek up Everest to heights where usually climbers would take tanks and masks because of the thin air. From Everest Base Camp the trek took a route past the Khumbu icefall up to the South Col and then successfully to the summit at 8,840 metres above sea level. And like many of the amazing things that happen on Mt Everest, Leo had his camera there to film it.

Treks to Everest continue to captivate the imagination of climbers and walkers all around the world. Ever since its discovery, hundreds of expeditions have been made to the world’s highest mountain. Some have ended in disaster, others have discovered new routes to the top or achieved significant records. Here are five of the most famous Everest expeditions…
1924 – The Mallory Expedition
The famed British explorer and mountaineer George Mallory had made a previous attempt on the summit in 1922, an expedition that met with disaster when seven porters died in an avalanche. In 1924, he returned to Everest Base Camp determined to make it to the top, resulting in one of the most famous and tragic expeditions in the history of the mountain.
On 8th June 1924, George Mallory, alongside his climbing partner Andrew Irvine, made his second and ultimately ill-fated attempt on the summit of Everest. Trekking and climbing up the hazardous terrain, they were spotted by Noel Odell (another member of the expedition) on what appeared to be the Second Step, a few hours climb away from the summit itself. Neither Mallory nor Irvine made it down. Mallory’s body was finally discovered in 1999, but Irvine’s has never been found. Debate continues to rage in the mountaineering community as to whether or not either of them made it to the summit before they died.
1953 – First Successful Ascent
29 years after the Mallory Expedition, Edmund Hillary (a New Zealand climber) and Tenzing Norgay (a Nepalese Sherpa) finally made the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest. Their trek to Everest was part of a British expedition in March 1953 that was determined to finally conquer the world’s highest mountain. After settling in Everest Base Camp, two members of the expedition (Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans) made the first attempt, but were driven back 300 metres from the summit due to bad weather and a malfunctioning oxygen system. Two days later, on the 29 May 1953, Hillary and Tenzing made it to the top, becoming the first men to stand on the highest point on Earth. On his return from the summit, Hillary met his companion George Lowe and simply said: “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.”
1980 – First Solo Ascent
By 1980, the veteran Italian climber Reinhold Messner had set one Everest trekking record already; in 1978, he and his climbing partner Peter Habeler became the first climbers to make an ascent of Everest without using bottled oxygen, refuting the claims of a large number of mountaineers and doctors at the time who thought this was impossible. In 1980 he set another record, making the first solo ascent of Mount Everest (also without oxygen).
1996 – The Everest Disaster
1996 was a tragic year for Everest trekking – fifteen people died, eight of them in a single day, in what is the worst disaster on Everest to date.
On May 10 1996, over 30 climbers set off from Everest Base Camp to make their attempts on the summit. A number of delays and the sheer number of climbers making the ascent meant that many achieved the summit after 2pm, much later than is considered safe. On the way down, a sudden blizzard hit the mountain, burying the fixed ropes used in the climb and concealing the path back to Everest Base Camp. Due to the poor visibility, the climbers were quickly separated and disoriented, and eight of them died of exposure. Most poignant was the case of Rob Hall – having stayed behind to try and help another member of the expedition, he was stranded on the South Summit. He managed to speak to his wife on satellite phone, saying “Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much,” before dying soon after.
2004 – Fastest Ever Ascent
There are all kinds of climbing records associated with Mount Everest, and in 2004 Pemba Dorjie (a Nepalese Sherpa) set an impressive one – the fastest ever successful ascent and descent of Everest, making it there and back over the southeast ridge in eight hours and ten minutes.
With plenty of records still to break and hundreds of climbers each year determined to make it to the top, trekking to Everest will continue to generate new heroes (and new tragedies) for years to come.

Sir Edmund Hillary is an inspirational figure whose achievements have made him a record breaker and a modern hero in the eyes of New Zealanders, mountaineers and Everest trekkers alike. More importantly, he left has his mark along the Everest Base Camp Trek trails, where you can find evidence of his extensive philanthropic legacy.
Edmund Hillary’s Early Life
Edmund Hillary was born in July 1919 in Auckland, New Zealand. His love of adventure was established at early age in the adventure stories he would read on long train journeys. This sense of adventure was first realised in a mountain setting on a high school trip, after which he was hooked: the beginning of an eighteen year journey to Everest Base Camp began with Mount Ruapehu (2,797 m), a mountain on the North Island of New Zealand. His first major climb followed three years later, after college, with Mount Ollivier (1,933 m). Hillary later commented about that climb: “It was the happiest day I had ever spent.”
Hillary’s Expeditions
Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to ever reach the highest peak in the world. His famous partnership with Tenzing Norgay in 1953, when their Everest Trek made the summit, made them instantly renowned and revered worldwide. Hillary was humble about the achievement, pointing out that the success of the expedition was owing to his climbing companion Tenzing, and the considerable efforts of the support team of almost four hundred men who had waited expectantly at Everest Base Camp to hear if they made it to the top.
Four years after trekking to Everest’s summit, Hillary was aboard the first small plane to fly to Marble Point, a remote science research centre in Antarctica. This small accolade took on more significance in 1985 when he teamed-up with another icon of exploration, Neil Armstrong, to fly to the North Pole. In doing so he became the first man to have stood on the world’s tallest peak and on both poles.
Charitable Missions
But Hillary did not turn his back on the country where he had made his fame. Through the Himalayan Trust that he founded, he was instrumental in building bridges in Nepal, re-roofing a monastery, and organising the construction of the airport at Lukla, which is used to this day to bring hundreds of trekkers to the main starting point of their Everest Base Camp Trek. More vital for the Sherpa people was the infrastructure that he raised money for, pioneering the construction of 27 schools, 12 clinics and 2 hospitals in the Khumbu, starting with the Khumjung School in 1961. Over a 20 year period the Himalayan Trust has supported numerous education, healthcare and environmental projects that have significantly enhanced the lives of the Sherpa people. In later years, Hillary became a special ambassador to Nepal for UNICEF.
As well benefitting the local Sherpa people, the medical facilities he established are valuable for treating ailing trekkers on Everest Base Camp trek expeditions, and featured in the recent BBC ‘Everest ER’ series.
Hillary was also keen that there may be people to follow in his footsteps, and share his passion for life outdoors. He put his name to the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre in New Zealand that provides youth courses for secondary schools and vocational training schemes for the outdoor industry. Courses include training in white-water kayaking, rock climbing, and of course, mountaineering.
Commemorations
During his lifetime, New Zealand’s most famous person had tributes heaped upon him. He was knighted by the Queen and made a member of the Order of the Garter. Hillary was honoured by the United Nations for his conservational work, and had a statue of him erected in Mount Cook National Park. He was also New Zealand’s high commissioner to India.
After his death in 2008, there were proposals to memorialize Hillary by renaming Mount Ollivier after him, since the mountain was his first major climb as a young man. His most enduring legacy though will be in the form of his charitable foundation, the Himalayan Trust, which will continue to improve the lives of the Nepalese people that work and live along the Everest Base Camp Trek routes for generations to come.

The world’s highest mountain has found itself at the centre of the global debate on the environment. In recent years, mountaineers at Everest Base Camp have attracted criticism because of the accumulated high-altitude litter left by summit expeditions. Environmentalists have also used changes to the environment on Mount Everest (8,848 metres) to highlight the issue of global climate change. But this publicity cuts both ways; it makes Everest both a cause for concern and a high-exposure platform for important green issues.Tidying Everest
Tidying up at high altitudes is a difficult proposition. Beyond the altitude of about 7,000 metres, where the air gets significantly thin, climbers are understandably more concerned with lightening their loads and completing their journey than keeping the ground free of litter.
This is particularly the case beyond Camp 4 (7,920 m) where mountaineers make the final push to the summit, or are staggering back towards safety. Because of this, there has been discarded equipment and empty oxygen bottles accumulating for many years.
There have been a number of clean-up expeditions on Mount Everest (8,848 m). In 2000, National Geographic filmed an all-out clean-up effort on the mountain and even got Sharon Stone to do the voice-over for the documentary. Another full-scale cleaning trek from Everest Base Camp was organised by a Japanese team in 2007. Increasingly, mountaineers are encouraged to use recyclable metal containers, which feed Nepal’s scrap metal industry, and the toll for littering on Everest is being used to fund the ongoing tidying mission.
Despite these efforts, the outcry continues and the condition of the world’s tallest mountain has become symbolic of how we mistreat our natural wonders. Even the legendary Apa Sherpa, Everest trekking veteran with 19 Everest summits to his name, has used his fame to draw attention to the problem.
However, the emphasis of this concern has shifted more recently to focus upon the effects on Mount Everest of a more widespread problem. More alarming than litter (and less easily rectified) is the damage to the Everest environment being caused by global climate change.
And this is where the concerns of the environmentalists and the Everest community tend to overlap. The outdoor pursuits enthusiasts, mountaineers, and the adventure travel companies that conduct variations of the Everest Base Camp Trek all agree: they want to ensure the future of Nepal’s wonderful landscape.Global Warming
It is easy to see even with anecdotal evidence how global warming is affecting the landscape around the Everest Base Camp Trek trails. For a while, the Sherpas have been reporting how the snow caps have retreated, and Greenpeace have issued a ‘before and after’ image comparing a photograph of the Rongbuk glacier taken in 1968 to how it looks today. The reduction of the ridges of snow and towers of ice is clear to see, and similar changes have been recorded on mountains thousands of miles away, such as Mount Kilimanjaro (5,893 m) in Tanzania.
Whatever the cause for this change, the importance of glacial melting should not be underestimated. The melt-water from Himalayan glaciers provides the water volume for the Indus, Yangtze, and Ganges rivers and affects the populations that depend upon that water. If the Himalayan glaciers melt considerably, it could mean dangerously increased flooding along those rivers, followed by severe long-term water shortages.
Again Everest trekking luminaries such as Apa Sherpa are outspoken on the cause. Following on from his Eco-Everest climb in 2009, his next expedition this month will be to climb an unnamed (and possibly unexplored) Nepalese peak. He will likely be armed with his banner for the summit photographs: “Stop Climate Change – Let the Himalayas Live!”