The famous hillary step collapsed on Everest. Hillary Step, the slope of Mount Everest: description and history Where are the hillary mountains
Two Sherpas from Scott Fischer's team are recovering their breath, leaning on their ice axes, Andy Harris rises behind them.
Below, at a short distance, other climbers are visible.
When Fischer took this photo, he was at the end of the line, urging the crowd of climbers on the summit.
Three climbers are visible right at the top of the Hillary Step; four climbers climb the steps.
Hillary step.
This steep indentation in the crest of the summit, located 60 vertical meters below the "roof of the world", is the most technical part of the ascent on the standard Everest route.
Scott Fisher took this photo from below, at the foot of the steps, in the foreground on the left, standing with his right side to the viewer, Doug Hansen; he is waiting his turn to climb the railing.
Fisher took the picture looking down from the top of Hillary's step. Pictured (left to right) are Gammelgaard, Tim Madsen and Charlotte Fox during their descent. The small figures in the upper right corner of the picture are Neil Beidleman and Sandy Pittman.
View of the upper slope of Mount Everest from the top of Lhotse.
The hallmark of Everest is the snowy "flag" hanging from the top of the Southeast Ridge, the standard climbing route to the summit.
Everest, route along the southeast ridge.
Rob Hall New Zealander, 35, expedition leader for Adventure Consultants.
Scott Fisher, American, 40 years old, leader of the expedition of the Mountain Madness Association.
Yasuko Namba, Japanese woman, 47 years old, member of Rob Hall's team. She was at that time the eldest among the women who reached the summit of Everest.
Andy Harris, New Zealander, 31, handler from Rob Hall's team.
Doug Hansen, American, 46 years old, member of Rob Hall's team. This postal worker worked two jobs at the same time to pay for his dream of climbing Mount Everest.
A strong wind covered the top of Everest with clouds. On May 12, descending from Camp Four after the hurricane and at 7,600 meters, Krakauer turned back to take another look at the top of the peak where his comrades Hall, Harris, Hansen, and Fisher had died. Nambu died of cold on the South Col, only a twenty-minute walk from the tents.
End of April 1996, base camp Everest. Group portrait of Rob Hall's team in front of a Buddhist altar on the eve of the tragic ascent.
Chapter first
ON THE TOP OF EVEREST
The upper part of this great peak seems to be surrounded by a cordon beyond which not a single person can set foot. In reality, the whole point is that at an altitude of 7600 meters and above, low atmospheric pressure affects the human body so much that truly difficult mountaineering is impossible, and the consequences of even a weak storm can be tragic. And only ideal weather conditions and a good condition of the snow cover give at least some chance of success, but on the last section of the ascent, not a single expedition has the opportunity to wait for a convenient moment ..
No, it is not at all surprising that Everest did not give up after the first attempts to overcome it, on the contrary, it would be extremely surprising and even sad if he nevertheless allowed himself to be conquered, because this is not in the nature of great mountains. Perhaps we have become overconfident in this age of technological advancement, armed with excellent crampons and rubber boots. We forgot that this mountain still dictates its own conditions and grants success only when it wants it. Otherwise, why does mountaineering retain its incomprehensible appeal to this day?
Eric Shipton, 1938 "On that mountain"
Standing on top of the world, with one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I scraped the ice off my oxygen mask, turned my shoulder to the wind, and stared absentmindedly at the bulk of Tibet. On some obscure, fragmentary level, I understood that the expanse of earth that stretched out under my feet was a truly breathtaking sight. For many months I dreamed about this moment and foresaw the explosion of feelings that should accompany it. But now, when I finally and really found myself at the top of Everest, I had no strength for emotions at all.
It happened on May 10, 1996. It was a little after noon. I haven't slept for fifty-seven hours. All the food I could cram into myself over the past three days consisted of a bowl of lamb soup and a handful of M&M peanuts. Several weeks of severe coughing tore my chest, and normal breathing turned into a painful ordeal. High in the troposphere, at an altitude of 8848 meters, my brain received so little oxygen that my mental abilities were reduced to the level of a retarded child. Under such circumstances, I was unable to feel anything but cold and tired.
I reached the summit a few minutes behind Anatoly Boukreev, the Russian guide on the American commercial expedition, and only slightly ahead of Andy Harris, the guide of the New Zealand team to which I belonged. Boukreev and I barely knew each other, but I managed to get to know Harris well and fall in love during the last six weeks. After taking four quick shots of Harris and Boukreev in spectacular poses at the top, I turned around and rushed down. My clock showed 13 hours 17 minutes. In total, I spent less than five minutes on the roof of the world.
A little later, I slowed down to take another shot. It was a view of the Southeast Ridge that we were climbing. As I aimed my lens at the two climbers on their way to the summit, I noticed something that had eluded my attention until that moment. In the south, where the sky was completely clear an hour ago, now a veil of clouds covered Pumori, Ama Dablam and other lower peaks that surrounded Everest.
Later, after the bodies of six of the dead are found, and the search for the other two is abandoned, after my teammate Beck Weathers's gangrene-stricken right hand is amputated by surgeons, people will ask: why, if the weather began to deteriorate, climbers on the mountain did not pay attention to it?
Why did the veteran Himalayan guides keep moving upwards, dragging a crowd of relatively inexperienced amateur climbers (each of whom paid as much as $65,000 to climb Mount Everest safely) into an apparent death trap?
No one is able to answer this question, including the leaders of those two groups, because both of them are dead. But I can testify that nothing I saw a little past noon on May 10 foreshadowed the approach of a deadly hurricane. To my oxygen-depleted brain, the clouds drifting over a large ice valley - the famous Western Circus, seemed rare weightless and quite harmless. They floated, shining in the rays of the midday sun, and in appearance were no different from the innocent haze of convective condensate that rises over the valley almost every afternoon in the afternoon.
What is the Hillary Step, every climber who dreams of conquering Everest knows. Some say it's scary place, littered with the corpses of the failed conquerors of the "Top of the World". Others - that the comb is nothing special and dangerous. In the Alps, for example, there are more complex walls. And if the weather conditions are favorable, and there is a sufficient amount of oxygen in the cylinders, then it is easy for an organism adapted to the height to overcome the Hillary slope. Sherpas do this several times a season. They also hang ropes, which climbers and commercial tourists then cling to. But this article is not intended to answer the question of whether it is easy or hard to overcome the Hillary step. We'll just tell you what it is. And according to this information and photographs, you can get an impression of the complexity of the trip.
Everest
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the British Geodetic Survey determined with the help of instruments the most high peak Himalayas. It turned out to be Peak 15 located on the border of Tibet and Nepal. The peak at a height of 8848 meters above sea level was named after the head of the service, geodesist George Everest. The British had no idea that the mountain already had a name. The Nepalese called her the Mother of the Gods - Sagarmatha. And the Tibetans called it. For them, the shining peak symbolized the Great Mother of Life. This area was considered sacred. Only in 1920, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama allowed the Europeans to try to storm it. However, Chomolungma was conquered only by the eleventh expedition, which came to the Hillary Step on Everest. It is named after one of its members, who, in conjunction with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, was the first to climb the "Top of the World".
What is the Hillary step
Doesn't present much difficulty. There are no vertical ledges along the way, which can only be climbed by a trained rock climber. The problems faced by the conquerors of Everest are associated only with the huge height of the mountain. At 8000 meters above sea level, the so-called death zone begins. There is too little oxygen in the rarefied atmosphere to support life. Low temperature and pressure gets up with the most nasty things with a person's consciousness, bare low instincts. In such a situation, each step is given with difficulty. And here, not far from the cherished peak, at an altitude of 8790 meters, the Hillary Step rises - a vertical ledge consisting of ice and compressed snow. There is no way around it. Sheer cliffs surround it on both sides. There is only one thing left - to climb an almost vertical thirteen-meter ledge.
Climbing Hillary Everest
The 1953 expedition, the eleventh in a row, consisted of more than four hundred people. The lion's share was made up of porters and guides - Sherpas. This people has long lived in high altitude. As a result of adaptation, Sherpas have voluminous lungs and a strong heart, as well as amazing adaptability to frost. The expedition progressed slowly. The rise and adaptation took two months. The group set up camp at an altitude of 7900 meters. The first to storm the summit were two British climbers Ch. Evans and T. Bordillon. But since they had problems with their oxygen masks, they were forced to return. The next day, May 29, a New Zealander with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay set off to try his luck. After the South Col, a huge firn step blocked their path. Hillary tied himself with a rope and began to climb an almost sheer slope. So he reached the snow ledge. Soon, Norgay also climbed up the rope to him. This pair of climbers reached the summit at 11.30 am.
Climbing difficulties associated with the Hillary step
The first conquerors of Everest reached their goal before noon, and therefore were able to leave the "death zone" before sunset. This is a very important circumstance. Because spending the night above eight thousand meters above sea level means certain death. Now the conquest of Chomolungma has been put on a commercial basis. Many rich and ambitious tourists of varying degrees of training go to storm Everest. But both they and enthusiastic climbers have the same daily routine. Rise in the dark, forced march up, photographing at the Top of the World for about 15-20 minutes and a quick descent to the camp. But the Hillary Step is too narrow a slope for two people to pass on it. As a result, queues often form around it and even fights break out. After all, commercial tourists who have paid several thousand dollars to climb Everest do not want to come to terms with the idea that they need to turn back because the time is late. Some refuse guides, go to the top and die on the way.
Plans for commercial tourists
There are several ideas on how to make Everest more accessible. Hillary's steps can no longer take so many victims. It no longer seems like such an insurmountable obstacle. In early April, a team of Sherpas arrives at a stationary camp, equips its buildings, and then goes to the top. There, these courageous people hang ropes on the steps of Hillary, which thousands of Europeans and Americans will climb during the season. These rich tourists will be followed by Sherpas with luggage and therefore the idea of building on Everest ... an elevator is being seriously considered. Of course, the top of the mountain will have to be dressed in a dome, which will be inflated with air, like the cabin of an airplane. But even if this bold idea is put into practice, still thousands of people will storm the slopes of the mountain, rushing to the snow-covered peak.
Sherpa plan
The guides, who also don't want to lose their earnings, came up with a less expensive idea than the Everest lift. It consists in laying several stationary stairs along the Hillary step. This plan does not look so unrealistic. Sherpas are already setting up structures in the base camp at an altitude of 5300 meters. They lay metal stairs across the constantly moving Khumbu glacier and equip a route to the Valley of Silence (6500 m). Previously, they hung two ropes at the narrowest point of the ledge. Now they are proposing to install wide metal stairs on the Hillary Steps. Everest will become more accessible thanks to them, because this rock will not have queues.
Since 2016, the mountaineering community has been debating whether the famous "Hillary Step" on Everest collapsed or not.
Recall that the reason for the emergence of such suspicions was the subsequent ascents of climbers to the top of the world in the 2016 season.
From the Editor:
The Hillary Step is an almost vertical rocky slope 13 m high, which is a narrow snow-ice ridge with sheer cliffs on the sides.
It is located at an altitude of 8790 m on the southeastern ridge of the mountain, half way from southern summit before main summit Everest. Named after .
However, that, that in the past, among the climbers there was still no unambiguous understanding of the degree of collapse of this rocky area, since it was heavily snowed.
In addition, even the government of Nepal was forced to intervene in these disputes, declaring that the Hillary step did not collapse: "The department has collected, with the help of high-rise Sherpas, all the information necessary to analyze the situation about the state of the Hillary step.
Our report prepared by the guides confirms that the Hillary Step is still in place and that its damage has been attributed to heavy snowfall. In addition, it is worth considering that this year the route was laid 5 meters to the right of the original path on the Hillary Step" the government of Nepal said in a 2017 statement.
In general, the Ministry of Tourism of Nepal took the reports of climbers about the collapse of the Hillary Step so seriously that even this season they forbade climbers who climbed Everest to independently report on the state of this rocky area!
However, with the end of the climbing season, one of the most famous Nepalese Sherpa climbers was the first to express his opinion about the story of the collapse of the Hillary step.
According to him: "There is nothing more to discuss here. The Hillary step is no more, at 100%"
Mingma, being in the vicinity of this place, had a good opportunity to examine it in detail when he was waiting for the return from the top of his commercial group.
He confirmed his words with a photograph taken during the passage of this section:
Apparently, subsequent Everest climbers will never again be "fortunate" to overcome one of the most dangerous and impressive sections of the standard climbing route, which Edmund Hillary was able to climb with incredible effort climbing a thin crack between rock and ice: "It was then that I truly realized that we are climbing to the top of Everest"- said Edmund himself
Nature is cruel...
She is like an artist who destroys her creation, with a ruthless hand destroys what people admire. Either we are unworthy, or she has her own plans for this.
The Silver jets in the Crimea lost its visor and ceased to be a celebrity in January 2016, in the same year, one of the main attractions of Morocco turned into a pile of limestone on the Lezgir beach, the famous azure window in Malta ceased to exist in the spring of 2017, and now it turns out that the highest peak of the planet-Jomolungma (Everest) has lost one of the most famous of the most famous the climb of the ascent route - the steps of Hillary.
Presumably, the Hillary Step collapsed in the spring of 2015 as a result of a series of spring earthquakes that claimed the lives of more than 8,000 people. The first reports of a change in the shape of the site appeared in May 2016, but the abundance of snow then prevented the disappearance of the step from being confirmed. And just yesterday it was confirmed.
By the way, Chomolungma itself moved three centimeters during this earthquake.
The "step" was at an altitude of 8790 m and was the last frontier on the way to the main peak of the mountain. It got its name in honor of the leader of the first expedition that conquered the peak, New Zealander Edmund Hillary. The 13-meter slope was a ridge of snow and ice, which the athletes had to overcome one at a time. 
Now, according to climbers, conquering the highest mountain in the world is becoming even more dangerous.
“I don’t know what to do when there is no snow cover, because now there are huge stones that will be very difficult to deal with,” said British climber Tim Mosedale on the Everest Expedition Facebook page.
According to the conqueror of the mountains, despite the fact that information about the collapse appeared last year, it was possible to verify this only now.
And with the existing Hillary step, the queues for ascent or descent along its plane could mean mortal danger for those who were delayed in case of deterioration weather conditions. How the procedure for overcoming this obstacle will now be organized, the travelers do not know. 
“On a perfectly clear day, it doesn’t matter if you linger for one and a half to two hours at the Hillary Step, which is very close to the top. However, if the weather changes, it’s a matter of life and death,” veteran mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington told the Air Force five years ago.