North Ridge Route - Mount Everest

Man, is it ever difficult to focus on work with this trip looming just a few days away. The good thing about being the boss is that, in an a-hole move of epic porportions, you can push all your work down on the good folks that work for you.

While my mind is racing, I thought I would show everyone the main route climbers take to summit Mount Everest from the North. This is the route that the 1921-1924 British expeditions with George Leigh Mallory took. There aren't too many other ways up this route that can be done by anyone other than the most insane and gifted of climbers or Superman.

This picture marks out the North Ridge route and how one would ascend Mt. Everest from the North Col. I came across a few narratives about how one would climb the mountain from this route, and although it is a more daunting, many claim that it is a better climb for those climbers that like to be more isolated and away from the massive crowds climbing the Southeast route that Edmund Hillary's team made famous and the 1996 Into Thin Air expeditions made infamous.

There is a lot of empty space on this route, so with the winds blowing from west to east, it extremely exposed. Added to this challenge, is that snow accumulates on the North Ridge and, due the monsoons dumping snow on the mountain from June to August, you would have to be, as guide Eric Simonson puts it, "brain dead to want to climb up to the Col in the autumn season. In fact there have been quite a number of deaths here from avalanches in the autumn season (and very few successful ascents from the North at all then)."

The highest I'm going, Camp III, sits about 500 vertical meters below. Camp III is marked ABC, or Advanced Base Camp, in this overhead picture. The Discovery Channel's "Beyond the Limits" site has a fantastic interactive map of this route, but I cannot embed it here, so click the link to see the vertical relationship between Base Camp and ABC.

Camp III is normally very windy. The winds whip right off of the North Col and pound the ledge 500 meters below. This concerns me greatly because I only weigh about 14.0 lbs. In fact, the tents may weigh more than me, so I'm thinking about wedging myself under a rock once I get there.

Enjoy the maps and follow along!