A Brief History of Mount Everest Expeditions

Despite these perils and others, many successful (and some unsuccessful) expeditions have taken place on Mount Everest over the years. The first known surveys of Everest by Europeans took place in the 1840s, as part of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. Though this survey did not ascend the mountain, they were among the first to declare it the tallest in the world, and it was Andrew Scott Waugh, British Surveyor General of India, who suggested the name for the mountain that would ultimately stick, chosen in honor of his predecessor in the position, Sir George Everest.

By 1885, the president of the Alpine Club had asserted that ascending Everest was possible, but it was not until 1921 that a European would set foot on the mountain’s flanks, while the first confirmed expedition to reach the summit took place in 1953, more than a century after the mountain was first “discovered” by British surveyors.

At the beginning of 1921, the closest any European had come to Everest was about 60 miles. At the time, Nepal was closed to foreigners, so the only approach to the mountain was through Tibet, and an eight-man expedition was mustered to explore the area in an attempt to reconnoiter an approach to the slopes of the mountain.

Among the team were George Mallory and Guy Bullock, two younger mountaineers without any Himalayan experience. Yet it was Mallory who became the first European to set foot on Everest, as the expedition discovered the northern approach and Mallory and Bullock climbed the mountain’s North Col to an altitude of nearly 23,000 feet. Unfortunately for them, they were an exploratory expedition, and not equipped to make a serious attempt to ascend to the top of the mountain.

During the 1921 expedition, Mallory had spotted what he thought was a route that would allow a climber to reach the summit, and in 1922 he was back, as part of a 13-man team to attempt just that. The 1922 expedition was the first to use bottled oxygen, which allowed them to set what was at the time a world record, as George Finch became the first human being recorded to have climbed higher than 8,000 meters—roughly 27,300 feet. 

Above 8,000 meters climbers enter what is known as the “death zone,” an altitude where the pressure of oxygen is insufficient to sustain human life for very long. It wasn’t the altitude that led to the first known mountaineering-related deaths on Everest, however. Instead, it was an avalanche triggered by attempting to go straight up the icy slopes of the mountain’s North Col which killed seven Nepalese porters, who became the first recorded casualties of the quest to ascend Mount Everest.

In 1924, George Mallory, the only man who had been present in all three major British Everest Expeditions, made his final trip to the mountain. The 12-man expedition team—along with some 60 porters—made the trek up the mountain, but it was Mallory and climbing partner Andrew Irvine who never returned. On the expedition’s third attempt to reach the peak, the two climbers disappeared. 

Irvine’s body has never been found, though Mallory’s was discovered in 1999, at an altitude of some 8,156 meters. Because they vanished so close to the summit, many have speculated that they may have reached it before they died, which would have made them the first to have done so—though there is no evidence to substantiate such a claim.

Geopolitical considerations made approaching Everest difficult at times, and it was the opening of Nepal to foreign mountaineers which enabled the eventual “conquest” of the mountain in 1953. The first people known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest were Edmund Hillary, a climber from New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese Sherpa climber. The two made use of route findings and caches of oxygen left behind by the expedition’s previous attempt to reach the summit two days earlier, which had been made by Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans.

In 1970, Japanese mountaineers launched a “siege-style” expedition to try to establish a route up the mountain’s southern face and find a way to ski Everest. With a crew of more than 100 people, the expedition was both a success and a tragedy.

While the expedition failed to summit and resulted in a total of eight deaths, including six porters who perished in an avalanche on April 5, Yuichio Miura also became the first person to ski down Everest, descending some 6,600 feet in around two minutes, using a parachute to slow his descent. His exploits became the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1975 documentary, The Man Who Skied Down Everest.

In the decades following the first successful ascent of Mount Everest, trips to the mountain’s summit became ever more common—and more commercialized. This tendency toward “adventure tourism” was called into question in 1996, when a total of 15 people died on the slopes of the mountain, making it the deadliest season on record at the time. Among those were eight climbers who perished when multiple guided expeditions were caught in a blizzard on the 10th and 11th of May. The tragedy raised questions about the commercialization of climbing Everest, but 1996 would not remain the mountain’s deadliest season for long…

By 2006, dozens of climbers were summiting Everest on a regular basis, and British climber David Sharp was among those who tried, leaving Base Camp with fewer bottles of oxygen than normal and attempting a solo climb. It is believed that Sharp reached the summit on May 14, but that he ran into trouble on the way down. By May 15, he was sheltering near a “landmark” corpse known as “Green Boots,” and was passed by several other expeditions who were either unable or unwilling to help him. His death on the mountainside kicked off a major ethics controversy within the mountaineering community.

The 21st century saw more and more climbers reaching the summit of Everest. By the end of the 2010 climbing season, there had been more than 5,000 successful ascents of the mountain, more than 75% of them taking place since the year 2000. The 2010s saw hundreds of climbers reaching the summit every year, with the exception of 2015, which was the first year with no successful ascent in decades, due to a massive earthquake that shook the region. 2019 saw a record of more than 890 summiters.

However, the 21st century also saw record numbers of deaths. 16 Nepalese guides were killed when an avalanche struck just below Base Camp in 2014, while the 2023 climbing season was brutally cold, leading to a new record of 18 deaths. Unlike many other deadly seasons, no one particular cause has been linked to the high number of deaths in 2023, with many suggesting that it can be attributed partly to a rise in climbers with less experience. 

Whatever the case may be, even now that it has been climbed by thousands of people, the allure of the highest peak in the world remains strong, and odds are there will be many more Everest expeditions still to come…