Thick dark clouds fill the sky, with icy winds carrying snow faster than 100 miles per hour. With a frigid temperature of -30 degrees Fahrenheit, life-threatening snowstorms and avalanches are common.
And these are typical conditions on the highest mountain in the world: Mount Everest.
The behemoth towers 29,032 feet (8,849 meters) between Nepal and Tibet in the Himalayas, with its peak surpassing most clouds in the sky.
Attempting to climb Everest requires months, sometimes years, of training and conditioning – even then, reaching the summit is far from guaranteed. More than 300 people are known to have died on the mountain.
And yet the mountain still attracts hundreds of climbers determined to reach its summit every spring. Here’s what it takes to make the climb and what has motivated some climbers to scale the world’s highest peak.
‘I thought I was in pretty good shape’
Dr. Jacob Weasel, a trauma surgeon, successfully summited Everest last May after nearly a year of conditioning.
“I would put on a 50-pound backpack and walk on a pedal for two hours with no problem,” Weasel told CNN. “So I thought I was in pretty good shape.” However, the surgeon said he was humiliated after discovering his fitness was no match for the lofty athleticism the mountain demands.
“I took five steps and had to take 30 seconds to a minute to catch my breath,” Weasel recalled of his struggle with the lack of available oxygen during the Everest climb.
Climbers aiming for the summit usually practice an acclimatizing rotation to adjust their lungs to the thinning oxygen levels once they arrive on the mountain. This process involves mountain climbers traveling up to one of four designated camps on Everest and spending one to four days there before traveling back down.
This routine is repeated at least twice so that the body can adapt to the decreasing oxygen levels. It increases a climber’s chances of survival and summiting.
“If you took someone and just put them in high camp on Everest, not even on the (upper) one, they would probably go into a coma within 10 to 15 minutes,” Weasel said.
“And they would be dead within an hour because their bodies are not adapted to that low oxygen level.”
Although Weasel has successfully climbed dozens of mountains, including Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet), Chimborazo (20,549 feet), Cotopaxi (19,347 feet) and most recently Aconcagua (22,837 feet) in January, he said none of them compare to the high mountains. -height of Mount Everest.
“Because no matter how well trained you are, once you reach the limits of what the human body can handle, it just becomes difficult,” he continued.
At its highest altitude, Everest is virtually incapable of supporting human life and most mountain climbers use supplemental oxygen above 7,000 meters. The lack of oxygen poses one of the biggest threats to climbers attempting to reach the summit, with levels dropping to less than 40% when they reach Everest’s ‘death zone’.
‘It’s hard to survive there’
The first destination for mountaineers is Everest base camp at approximately 17,000 feet, which takes climbers about two weeks to reach. They then ascend to the three remaining camps stationed along the mountain.
Camp four, the last before the summit, is located on the edge of the death zone at 26,000 feet, exposing climbers to an extremely thin layer of air, freezing temperatures, and high winds powerful enough to blow anyone off the mountain.
“It’s hard to survive up there,” Weasel told CNN. He remembers passing the bodies of climbers who died on the mountain – which is not unusual. The bodies of the fallen mountaineers are well preserved and show little to no decay due to the intense cold temperatures.
“I’m probably more familiar with death and loss of life than most people,” the surgeon said. “For me it was just a reminder of the gravity of the situation and the fragility of what life is… even more motivation to appreciate the opportunity.”
High-altitude cerebral edema (HACE) is one of the most common diseases climbers face while attempting to reach the summit. “Your brain is starved of oxygen,” Weasel said.
HACE causes the brain to swell as it tries to restore stable oxygen levels, causing drowsiness and problems speaking and thinking. This confusion is often accompanied by blurred vision and sporadic delusions.
“I had auditory hallucinations where I heard voices [of friends] which I thought was coming from behind me,” Weasel recalled. “And I had visual hallucinations,” he added. “I saw the faces of my children and my wife coming out of the rocks.”
Weasel recalled crossing paths with a friend, Orianne Aymard, who was stuck on the mountain due to an injury. “I remember staring at her for five minutes and just saying, ‘I’m so sorry,’” Weasel said.
“I spent over a decade of my life training to help people as a surgeon, and I found myself in a position where someone needs your help and you can’t offer any help… that feeling of helplessness was hard to deal with ,” Wezel told CNN.
Aymard survived. She was rescued and suffered several broken bones in her foot, in addition to severe frostbite on her hands. Despite all her injuries, Aymard is considered one of the lucky ones.
‘Their bodies will be frozen in the mountain’
Everest has long been a tomb for climbers who have succumbed to harsh conditions or accidents on its slopes.
When a loved one or fellow climber is seriously injured or dies on the mountain, it is routine to leave him or her behind if you cannot save him or her, said Alan Arnette, a mountaineering coach who climbed Everest in 2014.
“What most teams do out of respect for that climber is they move the body out of sight,” he said. And that’s only if they can.
“Sometimes that’s just not practical because of bad weather, or because their bodies become frozen in the mountain,” Arnette told CNN. “So it’s very difficult to move them.”
According to the mountain coach, seeing a dead body on Everest is comparable to seeing a terrible car accident. “You don’t turn around and go home,” Arnette said. “You respectfully slow down… or say a prayer for that person, and then you move on.”
It has been ten years since the deadliest accident on the world’s highest mountain, after an avalanche killed 12 Sherpa guides. And 2023 was recorded as the deadliest year on Everest, with 18 fatalities on the mountain – including five people still missing.
The process of recovering bodies is extensive and sometimes impossible. Helicopter rescues and search missions are challenging due to the high altitude and often treacherous conditions, causing some rescuers to die trying to save others.
‘Watch the sunrise from 30,000 feet’
The 900 meter climb from camp four to the summit can take 14 to 18 hours. Therefore, mountaineers usually leave camp at night.
“That whole night was cold,” Weasel remembers. “It’s dark, the wind is blowing.” But it turned out to be worth it in the morning, he said.
“Watching the sunrise from 30,000 feet and seeing the pyramid of Everest’s shadow projected onto the valley below…,” Weasel told CNN. “It was probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he continued.
“It’s weird to be up there and know that everything else on the planet is lower than where you’re standing.”
The size of the mountain is humbling, the surgeon said. “I’ve never felt so small,” he remembers. “That mix of humility and connection to something bigger than yourself is the right place from which we should approach our existence on this planet.”
Like Weasel, Arnette reached the summit at sunrise and experienced the same sense of “smallness.” At the summit, there were “more mountains than you can count,” Arnette recalled. “It was a feeling of enormous gratitude and at the same time I knew I had to get back down.”
After about 20 minutes to an hour, climbers typically begin descending back to the base of the mountain.
‘Bigger than yourself’
Before Weasel left for Nepal, he was given an eagle feather as a beacon of his Native American heritage. He was determined to plant the feather “on top of the world as a symbol of our people and what we have endured over the past hundreds of years,” Weasel told CNN. “This shows that our spirit is not broken, but that we are able to rise above the things that have happened to us,” he continued.
And this is why he decided to climb Everest, to be an example that everything is possible for young native people and his tribe.
“Knowing what it’s like up there, for me personally, is the only real justification for going and putting your life and other lives in danger, if you’re climbing for a reason much bigger than you,” Weasel said.
Arnette attempted to climb Everest three times before successfully reaching the summit.
“For the first three attempts, it wasn’t clear to me why,” Arnette said. When his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, he looked at his goal to climb differently.
“I wanted to do it to raise money for Alzheimer’s and to honor my mother,” Arnette said.
According to Arnette, about 300 people have received permits from the Nepalese government to climb the mountain this year. And he said the number is lower than previous years. [working to confirm the number of permits issued]
“I think one of the reasons is that there were 18 deaths last year and people realize that Mount Everest is a dangerous mountain.”
However, he doesn’t believe this should stop climbers from reaching the summit. “I’m a big believer that if you climb these mountains, you come home a better version of yourself,” Arnette told CNN.
“Everest has become too commercialized with ‘you’re stepping over dead bodies’ and ‘it’s littered with rubbish’,” the mountain coach said. “The reality is that it’s all very small, but there’s a lot of joy that people get out of it,” he continued.
“And that’s why we climb mountains.”
For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at CNN.com