For decades, the southern face of Mount Everest has been the preferred route to the world’s highest summit. The Nepalese government, which controls this side of the mountain, reliably kept it open to foreign climbers. And the country’s native Sherpas proved adept as climbing porters who could shoulder the burden of large expeditions.
But there’s more than one way to the roof of the world.
Everest’s northern side, located in China, should become the new normal for large expeditions to the summit, argues Adrian Ballinger, the leader of Alpenglow Expeditions. Ballinger, one of the world’s most accomplished alpinists, moved his guiding company’s main operation to Everest’s north side back in 2014.
In an interview with GearJunkie, he argues that a combination of factors makes the mountain’s south side more dangerous — and even unethical. The route’s infamous Khumbu Icefall often takes lives, especially of Sherpas, and has become more dangerous with climate change.
The southern face’s base camp is more vulnerable to earthquakes and avalanches, and many aspiring climbers fall sick on the long journey to reach it. Finally, Nepal has been slow to embrace stronger regulations, while China already requires climbers to show experience on other mountains.
The following interview is edited from voice notes recorded by Ballinger from Base Camp on the north side of Everest — at around 17,200 feet of altitude.
GJ: Mountains are changing rapidly with the onset of climate change. Does Alpenglow’s shift to summit approaches from the north side help mitigate the dangers associated with those problems?
Ballinger: Certainly, many mountains that we guide on around the world are becoming more difficult, more challenging, and sometimes more dangerous with climate change. That was absolutely part of my decision to move Alpenglow’s operation from the south side to the north side in 2014.
The icefall on the south side was just absolutely getting more dangerous year by year. There’s just no way you can run expeditions year after year without having fatalities of your staff, of your workers. And that just seems unethical to me.
So, the north side route, despite the challenges of working in China, is just a much safer route for our members, our clients, but also really importantly for our workers, our Sherpas, and foreign mountain guides. It was just imperative to switch sides.
With Rapid Ascent [Alpenglow’s acclimatization program using hypoxic tents], we do reduce some of our time on the mountain and, theoretically, less time on the mountain does reduce risk from things like rock fall, ice fall avalanche. But I would say that’s a much lesser factor than carefully choosing the mountains and routes that I go on.
I don’t guide K2, I don’t guide the south side of Everest, we stopped guiding the normal route on Huascarán. These are all examples of routes that became too dangerous through climate change.
GJ: Do you support the Nepali government’s plan to require a 7,000m summit before a climber can ascend Everest? Or do you think they should go even further and require an 8,000m peak before climbing Everest?
Ballinger: I think it’s a fantastic step. I really think we should support Nepal and Nepal’s government. Their hearts are in the right place in wanting to make mountaineering in Nepal, especially on the south side of Everest, less gross. I think they struggle to actually implement rules.
There’s nuance to a rule like requiring a 7,000m peak before climbing Everest that they still need to work through. Things we’re hearing are that the 7,000m peak potentially has to be in Nepal, and that’s probably not a great decision.
Or, not allowing let’s say a 6,900m mountain like Ama Dablam or Aconcagua to count, that’s probably a little too strict. But it’s the same in China: China has been requiring a 7,000m peak before climbing Everest for quite a while. It’s a fantastic rule. It’s certainly a rule that Alpenglow as a company has held to for a long time.
We actually require an 8,000m peak in many situations before climbing Everest. I think this is a common-sense rule. It’s going to need some work to get it to the right place, but it’s essential. Do I wish it was an 8,000m peak requirement? Absolutely, I would love to see more experience requirements of clients before coming to these mountains. But I think 7,000 m is a great and understandable step.
And it’s not just about experience for clients, we should also be having strict experience requirements for the sherpa. They should all have to go through a training program like the Khumbu Climbing Center training program before working up high as a high-altitude worker, and then mountain guides should all be going through IFMGA or UIAGM mountain guide training before being mountain guides.
Finally, expedition leaders should also have requirements. New companies shouldn’t be allowed to pop up who have never guided on Everest if they also have never guided on another 8,000m peak. It should be a stepping stone for companies, for expedition leaders, for mountain guides, for high-altitude workers, and for clients.
GJ: Do you think that additional regulations could eventually improve safety on the Nepali side of the mountain to where it’s equally safe as the Tibetan side?
Ballinger: Great question. I guess, because of the icefall, I think probably not. I think the future of Everest South Side is that one day there will be some sort of system to bypass the icefall, like climbers do in New Zealand on a mountain like Mount Cook, where they use helicopters to go above the icefall and then start their climb there.
Denali in the U.S. is the same. You fly a plane to 6,000 feet to avoid the bottom of the glacier and start your climb above the bad part of the glacier. Mont Blanc in Chamonix is also the same, where the vast majority of climbers don’t start from the bottom. They take a cable car or a train to pass the dangerous part of the glacier.
I think until that happens in Nepal, whether it’s helicopters or a gondola or something else, I think it will remain a much more dangerous side of the mountain. Certainly, regulations could bring back some of the ethics of climbing on that side and make it perhaps a little more reasonable. But no, I don’t think it’ll be as safe as the north side route.
The north side route has both strong regulations, and it has just a much safer climbing route that primarily follows ridges, so with avalanches, ice fall, and rock falls, things fall away from you. Instead, on the south side, especially on the Khumbu ice fall, when there’s ice fall, rock fall, or avalanches, everything falls on top of you.
GJ: Why do you think it’s better to train with tents and skip the trek to Base Camp? Is it just about reducing the overall timetable?
Ballinger: Don’t get me wrong, I love the trek to base camp on the south side. The Khumbu Valley is one of my favorite places in the world, and I think it’s a trek everybody should do. I just don’t think it’s actually a great way to start a Mount Everest climb.
So many people get sick on the trek to Everest base camp. You’re sharing teahouses with loads of trekkers and people from all over the world, and it’s really fun, but those teahouses are just places where everybody gets sick. And, if you’re not pre-acclimatized, your body is both struggling to acclimatize and struggling to combat gastrointestinal bacteria, bacterial infections, and upper Gl bacterial infections — just being in a new country where the bacterial flora and fauna are so different from your home.
It’s very difficult to both acclimatize and fight that stuff at the same time, so I don’t think it’s the best way to start a climbing trip on Mount Everest. We found that pre-acclimatizing in the tents makes people much stronger, whether you are on the south side or the north side.
GJ: You’ve outlined several safety reasons for preferring the north side. Can you expand on why you also think it’s more ethical?
Ballinger: As an individual climber, I think we can choose whatever level of risk we want. But on Mount Everest and for the vast majority of climbers on the mountain, they need to hire companies to assist them on the mountain, whether it’s setting camps, or putting in fixed ropes, or carrying loads. And as soon as we hire workers to climb on the mountain, we have a responsibility to their safety.
All the reasons you mentioned and I’ve mentioned in lots of previous articles, all the things that make the north side much safer, means that we can keep our workers safer.
So that’s really the big ethical piece: If we’re paying people money to help us climb these mountains, we’re responsible for their safety, and the north side is much safer for workers.
GJ: Is there a political component to getting approval from China for Everest expeditions? Have you seen some expeditions refused a permit? If so, why?
Ballinger: Certainly, one of the big challenges of climbing on the north side of the mountain versus on the south side is the permit and entry process. We not only need climbing permits for Mount Everest; we also need Tibet travel permits to travel in this restricted area, and finally, we also need Chinese visas. It is complicated, and I’m sure there is a political piece to that process.
In terms of expeditions being rejected, what we do know is certain logistics providers that used to be allowed to work on the north side of the mountain in Tibet are no longer allowed to work on this side because they didn’t meet the standards of cleanliness, removing trash, safety, of paying on time — all these different things.
There are now fewer companies over here and it’s hard to be approved as an operator on this side of the mountain. And that is something I really appreciate. I’m not sure it’s so much political as it is needing to meet standards to maintain both the ethics, the “leave no trace” ethics, taking care of communities that we travel through and trying to maintain a high level of safety.
There’s that, but then there is the political side of just traveling to this restricted area. Sometimes, China closes Tibet so people think Everest is closed on the north side. But it’s not really Everest. It’s that foreigners have sometimes not been able to travel to Tibet. A great example is during the Covid years, from 2020 to 2023, foreign climbing expeditions were not able to climb Mount Everest on the north side because they were not able to get Tibet travel permits.
So definitely politics is part of that and it’s something we do have to deal with. The good thing is that this is now our third season since Covid. The mountains are open, Tibet is open, and everyone here just seems so excited to have foreign tourists back in Tibet.
Pre-Covid, that was certainly my experience as well. The mountain, the north side, has been open every year since the last closure in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics. It was open from 2008 until Covid in 2020, so I think China is really a fantastic partner and is encouraging climbers on this side. It’s not as easy as Nepal, but we at Alpenglow Expeditions feel really confident that we can operate trips here season after season.
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