The Everest North Side Photo Gallery Kathmandu & Trek-in (5,000'—17,000')
"The road to Tibet winds up into the foothills, a thin road, winding through the lush vegetation, passed the terrace farms on the hillside beneath us, and tall crystal waterfalls, falling from the hills above, and a roadside chain of small dirty villages, all ripe with the sour odor of decomposing garbage and human waste..." —Stacy Allison, "Beyond the Limits"


Base Camp, Rongbuk Glacier (17,000')
"The Rongbuk Glacier left an old bit of terminal moraine about a half mile from it's present day finish, and that is where the official base camp is. It must be official because there is now a building there and a big Chinese flag. There are a number of expeditions camped just below this moraine and building with a bunch of flags of their own. The British expeditions of the early 1920's camped there, and the old memorial stone to Mallory and Irvine (who didn't make it down from the 1924 climb) is not far from the new building..." —Dave Hahn, 1998 Expedition Dispatches



Camp I (18,300')
"A steep ridge of loose rock-a collection of mountain sediment coughed up by the glacier- separates the camp from the snowfields. A stream of glacial runoff flows down the ridge and into a shallow bowl feeding the small pond at the marshy end of the valley..." —Stacy Allison, "Beyond the Limits"


Camp II (20,000')
"Between Base Camp and ABC is about 12 miles of rough hiking up the valley of the East Fork of the Rongbuk. It is wildly beautiful in places, but some folks find it difficult to concentrate on the beauty because it is the hardest type of hiking. Up and down loose, uneven, dirty moraine, at altitudes that make one's head approach bursting on that first time up..." —Dave Hahn, 1998 Expedition Dispatches


Camp III, ABC (21,300')
"Walking through the avalanche debris gave me an erie feeling, particularly in the dark, when vision ended with the headlamps faint thread, and everything beyond was little more than a faint mystery..." —Stacy Allison, "Beyond the Limits"


Camp IV, North Col (23,100')
"The storm increased during the night to hurricane force. With windspeeds of 150 km/hour it tore across the col. The temperature was -40°C. We three sat in the tent and held the canvas fast from within, all the while feeling that the wind would tear us away with it..." —Reinhold Messner, "Free Spirit: The First Oxygenless Ascent of Everest"


Camp V (25,600')
"Camp V rates right up there with one of the more pathetic campsites I've used in my 25 years of expedition climbing. You generally tie your tents down to anything you can find (old tents, rocks, pitons, oxygen bottles), put nets and ropes over them, and tie everything down again to anything else you can find. You want to put in earplugs and turn up your Walkman so you can sleep in the wind, but then you won't hear the tent ripping if all hell breaks loose during the night. Plan on clipping into a rope if you have to go to the bathroom without your crampons on...." —Eric Simonson, "The North Ridge Route on Everest"


Camp VI (27,500')
"Camp VI is another one of those camps with not much room. Maybe you can get four or five tents there if you really work at it (chop, dig, chop, dig). Look for the old destroyed tents... they make the best tent anchors (one persons garbage is another's treasure). Before you go to bed, find the start of the fixed ropes leading up through the Yellow Band... you don't want to be groping around in the dark trying to find the start of the route the next morning..." —Eric Simonson, "The North Ridge Route on Everest"


The Summit Bid (27,500'—29,028')
"Above the First Step is some mixed climbing, not hard, then a WILD knife edge that you walk across that leads to the old Camp VII site (not used anymore). On your left is the entire Kangshung Face, on the right the whole North Face... each way, about 10,000' down. This is a problem spot if the wind is blowing hard..." —Eric Simonson


The Mountain Zone thanks Eric Simonson and his
teammates for the use of their past expedition photos.