2026’s Everest Season Was Built on Betrayal and Death

Name: 2026’s Everest Season Was Built on Betrayal and Death
Uploaded: 2026-08-16T02:40:59+00:00
Duration: 34 min 48 s
Channel: eXtreme

00:00A man abandoned in the death zone while two companies argued over the bill for his rescue.

00:05A 32-person fraud ring using 5,000 fake cases to pocket 20 million dollars.

00:12And a mountain so crowded that on its single busiest day, more people reached the summit than in an entire

00:18season.

00:19This is everything that went wrong on Everest in 2026.

00:23Welcome to the extreme edge, where the stakes are high, but nobody's just a headline.

00:29On the morning of April 26th, 2026, six men were about to do something that could get them arrested, blacklisted,

00:37or killed.

00:38They were here because 90 minutes earlier, the official word had come down from base camp that Khumbu Icefall, the

00:44only road up Everest that season, was closed.

00:48That should have been it.

00:49This man said no.

00:51He had arrived at base camp straight from a hospital bed after getting hurt on a different mountain weeks earlier,

00:57and he was not supposed to be climbing anything yet.

01:00But when he heard the official safety team called off the season that morning, he simply didn't agree with them.

01:06So he pulled together Sherpas he trusted from a few different companies, and together with a Polish skier named Bartek

01:13Zemski, they had a plan that sounded straight up bizarre.

01:17Find a way through where 17 other Icefall doctors had failed.

01:22But even as they walked right up the entrance of the Khumbu Icefall, they could see the massive problem just

01:28right above them.

01:29It was this huge, towering ice block the size of a multi-story apartment building.

01:35If it broke loose and anyone was underneath it, that would be the end, just like it did in 2014.

01:42Authorities weren't going to let lightning strike twice, which is why they shut down everything.

01:47That's why Ming Ma and the others were here.

01:50They immediately got to work.

01:52But rather than blindly walking under the ice, Bartek Zemski pulled out a consumer drone and sent it buzzing up

02:00into the maze of broken ice above them and over the icefall.

02:04He was looking for a crack in the ice that the ground teams, walking on foot, simply couldn't see from

02:09where they stood.

02:11And through the drone's high-resolution camera, they saw a route that curled around the ice block instead of walking

02:18straight underneath it.

02:19It was longer and highly technical, but it was a way through that didn't put six men directly under an

02:26apartment-sized piece of ice.

02:28So that's the path they took.

02:30For the next several hours, Ming Ma Ji and the others fixed rope after rope, laid ladder after ladder, moving

02:38across some of the most unstable ground on the planet, all done in the shadow of the exact hazard that

02:44had shut the mountain down that morning.

02:47By April 28th, they declared the route to Camp 1 officially open.

02:52Ming Ma Ji's rogue intervention had essentially rescued the entire commercial season for both the Nepali government and competing operators.

03:00The mountain that was supposed to be closed for at least 10 more days was open again in two, and

03:06492 grateful climbers with their Sherpas went up the mountain.

03:11And yes, you heard that right, 492.

03:15If that sounds insane to you, that's because it absolutely is.

03:19And the strange part is the reason for that number has almost nothing to do with Nepal at all.

03:25We'll get to that in a minute.

03:27Within days, nearly 500 climbers and Sherpas were moving up the mountain.

03:32And that's where this Everest 2026 climbing season began to unravel.

03:37Because although Ming Ma Ji and his team opened the route, climbers were already weeks behind schedule, and they couldn't

03:45quite rush things because nobody climbs Everest in one go.

03:49Those climbers and their Sherpas now had to spend weeks acclimatizing on a mountain that had never held this many

03:56people before.

03:57Everything was strained to the hilt.

03:59Everyone was trying to make up for weeks they'd already lost.

04:03But strangely, the first tragedy of this 2026 Everest season had absolutely nothing to do with Ming Ma's risky new

04:11route.

04:11In fact, it didn't even happen on ice at all.

04:14Because on May 4th, a 51-year-old Sherpa named Lokpa Dendi was walking the trail from Gorak Shep to

04:22Base Camp.

04:22This is a footpath that ordinary trekkers and regular hiking boots use every spring.

04:28And Lokpa was about as far from an ordinary trekker as a human being can get.

04:32He had more than two decades of expedition work.

04:35He summited Mikalu six times, and Everest itself in 2017.

04:40For a man with that resume, this was a boring walk to the office.

04:44Yet, somewhere along that trail, something went terribly wrong.

04:48No one exactly knows what happened.

04:51Seven Summit Treks, the expedition company he was working for, said Lokpa was simply walking when he lost consciousness and

04:59collapsed.

05:00The government's liaison officer said he simply slipped.

05:04Police are still investigating what happened.

05:06But whatever that investigation eventually concludes, what will never change is that Lokpa Dendi,

05:14a man who had survived more than 30 Himalayan expeditions, died before he ever reached the mountain.

05:20If Lokpa's tragedy showed that the dirt trails weren't safe, what happened six days later showed the lower camps weren't

05:27either.

05:28Because while Everest was still reeling, this climber was making what should have been a routine acclimatization rotation on May

05:3610th, 2026.

05:38He was going up through the Khumbu Icefall to reach Camp 1, then head back down.

05:42His name was BJ Gamere, and Everest wasn't new to him.

05:47He had already stood on Everest's summit three times as the first person from Nepal's Dalit community to reach the

05:54top of the world.

05:55The climb up went exactly as planned, but after he reached Camp 1, his breathing became different.

06:01His chest felt tighter with every minute.

06:04Each breath became shorter than the last, as if someone was slowly turning a valve and cutting off his air.

06:12Then he began coughing up pink, frothy fluid.

06:15His lungs weren't bringing in oxygen anymore, they were filling with water.

06:20And his teammates knew they were looking at high-altitude pulmonary edema.

06:25They put him on oxygen, radioed for help, and started bringing him down.

06:30Because with Hape, the only real treatment was descending.

06:34Unfortunately, the only way off the mountain was back through the Khumbu Icefall,

06:38across swaying ladders, narrow crevasses, and unstable towers of ice.

06:44Every careful step here cost BJ time he simply didn't have.

06:50By the time he reached base camp, he was gone.

06:54BJ was doing exactly what every Everest climber is supposed to do before attempting the summit.

06:59But in the 2026 season, doing everything right was no guarantee of coming home.

07:04And the people dying first were the ones who knew the mountain best.

07:08Because the very next night, on May 11th, 2026, this 20-year-old Sherpa, Pura Gyaljin Sherpa,

07:16was hauling a load up the Lhotse face toward Camp 3 at night.

07:20It's necessary, invisible Sherpa work done at a time when ice is frozen solid and safest to climb.

07:27Like everyone else on the route, he was sliding his safety clip up a fixed rope.

07:32That rope was bolted to the mountain every few dozen feet, and that creates a terrifying mechanical problem.

07:39A metal clip can't slide past those bolts, so when a climber reaches one, they have to detach their clip

07:46from the rope,

07:47move it past the anchor, and hook it back on.

07:50It's a routine move, but it means that for a few seconds during every single transfer,

07:55there is absolutely nothing connecting them to the mountain.

07:59Around 11pm on May 11th, 2026, Pura reached one of those anchor points,

08:05and carrying a heavy load on his back, he unclipped as always.

08:09But then, just then, the mountain broke, and the crampons he was wearing lost their grip.

08:16With nothing left to catch him, his teammates watched as he tumbled nearly 1,300 feet down the face of

08:24Everest.

08:24By the time they reached him, Purba, the grandson of one of the greatest Sherpas in Everest history, was gone.

08:31That's three men in eight days, and not one was a paying client.

08:37As tragic as those deaths were, the biggest problem of the season hadn't even arrived yet,

08:43because all this time, Everest itself was refusing to cooperate.

08:48See, spring in Nepal is supposed to be dry, dust storms, rising heat,

08:53and the odd afternoon thundershower were the normal pattern this time of year,

08:57and everyone from trekking guides to farmers planned around it.

09:01But in 2026, Kathmandu saw rain and thunderstorms nearly every single day that spring,

09:08month after month of weather nobody had budgeted for.

09:12By the end of May, the capital had already logged nearly triple its normal rainfall.

09:18It was as if the weather simply couldn't decide what it wanted to do.

09:21And for climbers down at the base of Everest, this was terrible news.

09:26Because nobody summits Everest whenever they feel like it.

09:29Every spring, there was supposed to be a short stretch of days when the river of hurricane-force

09:35wind that normally sits right on the summit briefly moves away.

09:39That short period is called a weather window, and every spring expedition for the past 40

09:45years has been built around climbing in that period.

09:48But May 2026 was different.

09:51The winds simply stayed parked over the summit and showed no signs of letting off, while nearly

09:56500 climbers and their sherpas waited, burning money, oxygen, and patience.

10:02Thankfully, the weather finally broke in the third week of May.

10:06Nearly every climber on that mountain, after weeks of waiting, surged up at once.

10:11It was now or never.

10:13And in that wild, chaotic run, something was bound to break.

10:18And on May 20th, 2026, something did.

10:21Because that morning, 274 people reached the summit of Mount Everest.

10:27Think about that for a second.

10:30274 human beings.

10:31For most of Everest's climbing history, that many people didn't summit in an entire season.

10:37The old record was 223, set in 2019.

10:42Yes, that year when the entire world saw that photograph.

10:46The one that made the evening news on every continent and had people who'd never touched

10:50a mountain asking what on earth Everest had become.

10:54That season was supposed to be the moment a limit was placed on climbing permits.

10:58It clearly wasn't.

11:00In fact, the very next day, another 154 climbers summited.

11:04That's 400 people standing on top of the world inside a 48-hour window.

11:10If you're a tourism official in Kathmandu, those numbers are, well, golden.

11:15Record summits mean record revenue.

11:18This entire season has been a commercial success anyway, ever since China shut down the Tibetan

11:23side without warning and Nepal was able to sell 492 permits and a whopping $15,000 per

11:31climber.

11:31But a summit count only tells you who got up.

11:34And nothing about who makes it down.

11:37And getting down is where Everest does its killing.

11:40Because that's when climbers are exhausted, but also feel accomplished, too confident as

11:46they walk that final stretch to the summit, which is a knife-edge ridge.

11:50A place wide enough for exactly one person.

11:53Which means that on May 20th, the highest place on the planet had a traffic jam.

11:59Climbers had to stand completely still in the death zone for up to three hours.

12:05Something was bound to break.

12:07And for one of the climbers moving through that crowd, it did.

12:10His name was Sandeep Areh, and he was a tech professional from Phoenix, Arizona.

12:15He'd hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim multiple times and climbed Kilimanjaro in 2024.

12:22He'd even trekked to Everest Base Camp the previous year specifically to teach his body

12:26to adapt here.

12:27His own expedition company, Boots and Crampons, called him one of the strongest climbers in

12:32their group.

12:33And around 11am on May 20th, all that work paid off.

12:38Sandeep finally stood on the summit of Mount Everest.

12:41All those years of preparation, weeks of waiting out in the wind, hours in that brutal line

12:47finally paid off.

12:49So, standing on top of the world, he did what he had always wanted to do.

12:53He pulled out his flags, got ready for his photographs, and he took off his goggles.

12:59At sea level, that's nothing.

13:01At 29,032 feet, it's fatal.

13:05Up there, the atmosphere is so thin it filters almost none of the sun's ultraviolet radiation.

13:11So all those UV rays bounced right off blinding white snow, straight into his unprotected eyes.

13:19Sandeep took his photos, put his goggles back on, and started down feeling fine.

13:25The damage was already done, and he had no way of knowing it.

13:29An hour into the descent, maybe two, his eyes began to sting, then burn.

13:35Then the world went white, and then it went dark.

13:39Somewhere above Camp 4, at around 27,000 feet, Sandeep, one of the strongest climbers in his

13:45group, could no longer open his eyes without pain that made his whole body recoil.

13:51He was blind, in the death zone, standing still.

13:55And you already know what standing still up there costs.

13:58The longer he was trapped at that altitude, the more his body broke down, until the exposure

14:04triggered something even worse.

14:06High altitude cerebral edema.

14:08Fluid was building in his brain, swelling it against his skull.

14:12The man was now blind and dying at the same time.

14:16When word reached his outfit, they threw everything at it.

14:20Five Sherpa guides pushed up through the descending crowds and intercepted him near the south summit.

14:25And what followed was one of the most agonizing rescues of the entire season.

14:29With five men guiding a completely blind climber down the most technically demanding terrain on

14:35the mountain, trying to pass through 492 climbers, lowering him over rock steps one at a time,

14:42burning their own oxygen in the same bottleneck that had just broken their client.

14:48For 48 hours, they refused to leave him.

14:51And they did it.

14:52They physically brought a blind, dying man down out of the death zone to Camp 2.

14:58They radioed down with joy in their voices.

15:01They'd made it.

15:02A miracle extraction.

15:04Because on Everest, you can't outrun time.

15:07When nearly 500 climbers are crammed into a single weather window, a rescue means fighting

15:12a solid wall of human bodies.

15:15The damage from those extra hours in the death zone was already done, and no rescue could take

15:20it back out.

15:21Two days later, on May 22nd, Sundeep died at Camp 2.

15:26Not because he was weak, or because his team failed him.

15:30He died because every single time his Sherpas had to stand still and wait for dozens of

15:35other climbers to pass, his brain swelled a little more.

15:39The sheer volume of people on that ridge literally ran his clock out.

15:44That was Everest in 2026.

15:47And while Sundeep was taking his final breaths at Camp 2, that exact same crowd was running

15:52down the clock on another man trapped higher up the mountain.

15:56And these two weren't strangers.

15:58They were clients of the same company.

16:00They shared the same base camp, ate in the same dining tent, waited out the same 19 days

16:06of wind.

16:07They almost certainly wished each other luck before their summit pushes.

16:10His name was Arun Kumar Tiwari, and his history with Everest is more complicated.

16:17Arun had been on this exact mountain one year earlier in 2025.

16:21He climbed to Camp 3 around 23,600 feet, felt his body recovering too slowly, looked honestly

16:29at his own pace, and turned around.

16:31That's the hardest decision in mountaineering, the one summit fever kills people for refusing

16:37to make.

16:38Arun made it.

16:39He went home alive.

16:41So when he came back in 2026, Arun was 53, and staring at what he had to know was his

16:48last realistic shot at the summit.

16:50So when on May 21st he made his push, Arun was determined to get to the top, even if it

16:57cost him everything.

16:58And Arun Kumar Tiwari did finally reach the summit of Mount Everest, but it was around 5.30

17:05in the evening, and you know the almost iron rule of summit day.

17:10If you're not on top by 1pm, maybe, too, at the absolute limit, you turn around.

17:16Arun had chosen to press on, and while it was a bold decision, it cost him everything.

17:22Because on the descent, in the dark, more than 16 hours into his climb, Arun's body

17:28finally gave out at 28,700 feet.

17:32He began vomiting blood, just like BJ Gamiri had done, way lower on the mountain 11 days

17:39earlier.

17:39His Sherpa and three more guides tried their best to keep him awake, but it couldn't be

17:44done.

17:45Arun Kumar Tiwari died in the snow beside the Hillary steppe.

17:49As brutal as it sounds, Arun and Sundeep were actually the lucky ones.

17:54Their expedition company threw everything they had into rescuing them when they got into trouble.

17:59But this 2026, in the chaos of that exact same descent, other companies were looking at

18:06their own dying clients and deciding they were somebody else's problem.

18:10On that same May 20th, a climber named Ajaypal Singh Dhaliwal stood on top of Mount Everest.

18:18Ajaypal was a Canadian Punjabi climber who had come to the mountain through a guided expedition

18:23with a company he'd paid tens of thousands of dollars to put a trained team around him

18:29to track his oxygen and pace and bring him home.

18:33For him, that summit was the crowning moment, supposed to be earned through the same brutal

18:38weeks of waiting and the same three-hour lines as everyone else on that ridge.

18:43And then, somewhere on the way down, in the chaos of the most crowded descent in Everest history,

18:50Ajaypal became separated from his guided group.

18:53Hundreds of climbers were filing past in a slow-moving line, every single one of them

18:58locked inside their own private fight to stay alive, and Ajaypal was wandering among them

19:03alone and out of oxygen.

19:05The man who found him was Mingma Tinzi Sherpa.

19:08He was one of the most respected guides on the mountain and was working for a completely

19:13different company called Elite Exped.

19:16But, somewhere in the darkness, he noticed a single headlamp that wasn't moving with the line.

19:22He went to it and found Ajaypal, half-conscious, with no oxygen left, dying on his feet.

19:29And even though he had his own clients to shepherd down, Mingma Tinzi took his own oxygen,

19:35shared it with a man he had never met, and physically hauled him down to Camp 4.

19:39That should have been the end of the story.

19:42Except, when they reached Camp 4, Ajaypal's own expedition company reportedly refused to take

19:48responsibility for him.

19:49The company he had paid tens of thousands of dollars to would not take their own client back.

19:56So, Elite Exped carried the dying man into their own tents and kept him alive through the night,

20:02because apparently nobody else on the mountain would.

20:05And he wasn't the only victim of a company looking at a human being it was responsible for

20:10and deciding he was somebody else's problem.

20:13Because the darkest moral failure of the 2026 season happened to a man working at the very

20:19bottom of the mountain's economic machine.

20:22A man who wasn't even hired to set foot in the death zone in the first place.

20:26His name was Dawa Sherpa.

20:28At 52 years old, Dawa had spent decades doing low-level expedition labor.

20:34For the 2026 season, he was hired by a low-budget outfitter called Himalayan Traverse Adventure.

20:40His job was to sit at Camp 2 at 21,000 feet and work as a camp cook.

20:46Then, right at the end of May, everything changed.

20:50One of the company's regular high-altitude guides fell ill at base camp,

20:54and with the summit window closing and clients waiting to climb,

20:58Himalayan Traverse Adventure turned to the man whose job that season was supposed to be boiling water,

21:04cutting meat, and washing dishes.

21:06They offered Dawa a bonus of 10,000 Nepali rupees, or about 65 U.S. dollars,

21:13to pair up with one of their guides known as Mingma Sherpa,

21:16and take two foreign clients all the way to the summit of Mount Everest.

21:20For a man living in rural Nepal with a daughter fresh out of school,

21:25$65 was real money.

21:27So, he took the deal.

21:29On May 29th, during the absolute final hours of the climbing season,

21:34Dawa was high in the death zone, guiding British climber Chris Thrall

21:38and Polish climber Mariusz Chmielewski.

21:41But the mountain was empty, the weather was turning brutally cold,

21:45and near the top, Mariusz developed crippling frostbite.

21:48He abandoned his summit bid and, together with Dawa,

21:52retreated to Camp 4 to rest,

21:54while Chris and Mingma reached the summit and came back.

21:57The plan was to come down together the next day,

22:00but because of the frostbite,

22:02Mingma took Mariusz down earlier,

22:04leaving Dawa and Chris alone as the very last people to come down Everest in the 2026 season.

22:10The deadline the authorities gave before the Everest season was to be shut down

22:15was, at this point, days away.

22:17They had to come down fast.

22:19But somewhere above Camp 3, near a band of yellowish rock at around 24,000 feet,

22:25Dawa's oxygen ran low,

22:27and his 52-year-old body, which had spent the season cooking at Camp 2,

22:31began to shut down.

22:33He slowed, then he stopped.

22:36He sat down on a rock in the falling snow and told Chris,

22:40the client descending with him,

22:41that he was fine and just needed a moment,

22:44that they should keep going and he would follow.

22:47Now, Chris was running low on oxygen himself.

22:50To make things worse,

22:51Mariusz was just a few hundred feet from where Dawa stopped.

22:55He could barely use his frostbitten hands

22:57and needed physical help just to keep descending.

23:00It boiled down to a simple case of survival,

23:03and according to Chris,

23:05even Dawa told him to keep on going down.

23:08So, they did.

23:10They left Dawa sitting in the snow at 24,000 feet,

23:13in white-out conditions,

23:15on an empty mountain,

23:16and continued down.

23:18At some point after they disappeared,

23:20Dawa lost consciousness,

23:21and when he opened his eyes again,

23:24everyone was gone.

23:25Chris,

23:26Mariusz,

23:27Mingma,

23:28everyone.

23:29The ropes around him disappeared under fresh snow.

23:32Every camp below him was packed up and flown out.

23:35He was completely alone on a deserted mountain.

23:38When Chris and Mariusz reached base camp 38 hours later,

23:41they reported Dawa missing,

23:43and what happened next revealed the extent

23:46to which Everest in 2026 was broken.

23:49To understand why,

23:51you need to know about a quiet little cost-saving trick

23:54in the Everest industry called permit sharing.

23:57Himalayan Traverse Adventure,

23:58the budget outfitter Dawa actually worked for,

24:01didn't hold its own expedition permit.

24:04To save money,

24:05its climbers were legally registered

24:07under the permit of a completely different,

24:10much larger company called 8K Expeditions.

24:13On paper, Dawa belonged to 8K.

24:16In reality, he worked for Himalayan Traverse.

24:19So when Dawa went missing,

24:21an unthinkable standoff began.

24:23Dispatching a high-altitude helicopter search

24:26costs tens of thousands of dollars

24:29that neither outfit was willing to pay for.

24:31For days,

24:33while Dawa was freezing in the death zone,

24:35the two companies engaged in a paralyzing corporate feud

24:39over who was legally and financially responsible.

24:42In Kathmandu,

24:44Dawa's wife,

24:45Damu,

24:45and their daughter were officially told he was dead.

24:48His family had already begun conducting traditional Buddhist funeral rites.

24:53Meanwhile,

24:54Dawa was living through a nightmare that defies human biology.

24:58Alone,

24:59above 23,000 feet,

25:01with no food,

25:02no water,

25:03and no oxygen,

25:04he began dragging himself down the mountain.

25:07He survived the next several days

25:09by chewing hard glacial ice for hydration

25:12and eating candy he found in his pockets.

25:15By the time he reached the lower camps,

25:17the seasonal climbing window was so completely over

25:20that the icefall doctors had almost finished

25:23dismantling the ladders and ropes

25:25through the Khumbu icefall.

25:26So as he was struggling through the melting glacier,

25:30Dawa slipped and plunged straight into a deep,

25:34frozen crevasse.

25:35He remained trapped inside that icy grave

25:38for two full days,

25:40waiting to die.

25:42And that would have been the end of him

25:43if not for a small avalanche

25:45roaring down the crevasse he was in.

25:47And instead of crushing him,

25:48the debris created a rough ramp

25:51that allowed him to claw his way out of the ice.

25:54On the morning of June 4th,

25:55six full days after he'd been given up for dead,

25:59a garbage clearance crew working at the base

26:01of the Khumbu glacier saw Dawa

26:03in his bright blue bundle,

26:06sliding and crawling across the melting ice.

26:09He had lost his boots,

26:11suffered severe frostbite across his hands,

26:13and fractured his leg.

26:15But he was alive.

26:17Dawa's survival has been called an Everest miracle.

26:20To me, it's proof of how broken the mountain is.

26:24The refusal to send a helicopter for a dying man

26:27over a billing dispute

26:29becomes even more sickening

26:30when you realize that helicopters on Everest

26:33were secretly generating millions of dollars

26:36for rescues that never actually happened.

26:39Because long before Dawa was freezing in a crevasse,

26:42Nepal's Central Investigation Bureau

26:44filed criminal charges against 32 people,

26:48including helicopter company executives,

26:51hospital doctors,

26:52and trekking operators,

26:54after uncovering one of the largest tourism frauds

26:57in the country's history.

26:59The scheme was simple.

27:01Trekking operators would stage

27:03or wildly exaggerate medical emergencies

27:05among foreign clients.

27:07A helicopter would be dispatched

27:09under the banner of a life-or-death evacuation,

27:11and the client's travel insurance company

27:14would be billed tens of thousands of dollars

27:17for flights that were, in many cases,

27:19nothing more than expensive taxi rides.

27:22Nearly $20 million

27:23extracted through fake helicopter rescues.

27:26But when a real Nepali-born climber

27:29was actually dying on the actual mountain,

27:31they couldn't get one helicopter to fly for days

27:34because nobody would agree to pay for it.

27:37And helicopters weren't the only aviation network

27:39caught up in the madness.

27:41Even genuine, life-saving breakthroughs

27:44couldn't escape the broken nature of this season.

27:47Let me explain.

27:48For the past couple of seasons,

27:50a Nepali company called Airlift Technology

27:52have been quietly running

27:54one of the most genuinely good ideas

27:56Everest has seen in decades.

27:59Heavy-lift cargo drones.

28:01Their workhorse was a Chinese-built DJI fly cart,

28:05a machine capable of hauling oxygen bottles,

28:07ropes, and tents up the mountain to Camp 1

28:11and carrying garbage back down.

28:13Every load a drone carries is a load a Sherpa doesn't.

28:17For 2026, Airlift wanted to expand,

28:21and alongside the Chinese drone,

28:23they applied to test a professional heavy-lift drone

28:26from a U.S. manufacturer called Free Fly.

28:29The U.S. Embassy dispatched a special envoy

28:32to Everest Base Camp

28:33to personally unveil the American drone.

28:35To some, it was simply meant to be a publicity event.

28:39To others, it was displaying U.S. technology

28:42right in the shadow of the mountain,

28:44right next to China's border.

28:46Beijing was not amused,

28:48and on April 30th,

28:50right at the start of the season's

28:51most intense load-carrying period,

28:54Nepal's home ministry abruptly canceled

28:56the Chinese drone's existing permit

28:58and denied the American drone's application

29:01in the same breath.

29:02The official reason was vague,

29:05security sensitivities requiring wider consultation.

29:09The actual reason,

29:10as everyone on the mountain understood perfectly well,

29:13was that Nepal was caught between two superpowers

29:16and chose to ground everything

29:18rather than offend either one.

29:20So, for five days,

29:22at the exact moment the mountain needed supplies moving fastest,

29:26the two most capable cargo drones in the Himalayas

29:29sat useless on the glacier,

29:32and the Sherpas put the loads back on their own backs

29:35and walked into the same unpredictable icefall

29:38that kills without warning.

29:40Perhaps what even made this season weirder was that,

29:43after enough outcry from operators,

29:45the ministry quietly reversed itself,

29:48and the drones flew again on May 9th

29:51with no apology or explanation.

29:53It was just five days of unnecessary human risk

29:57spent on geopolitical drama.

30:00Thankfully, it took no lives,

30:01but the drones showed how little the system valued Sherpa safety,

30:05and what was happening with the summit itself this 2026

30:09showed how little the mountain's crowning achievement

30:12even means anymore.

30:14Explorers Web,

30:15one of the most respected outlets in mountaineering,

30:18documented a ton of controversial climbing records this season.

30:21I'm talking about climbers claiming no oxygen ascents

30:25while they secretly used oxygen in their tents at night.

30:28Climbers quietly taking helicopters from Camp 2

30:31back to base camp

30:33just to skip the icefall entirely.

30:36Then presenting their climbs as complete,

30:38dubious summit claims from climbers

30:40whose experience made the claims hard to believe.

30:43And the saddest part is that in almost all cases,

30:46nothing happens.

30:48The certificates get issued anyway.

30:50There's no summit police,

30:51no verification system with teeth.

30:53On the world's most famous mountain,

30:55the achievement everyone is paying six figures for is,

30:59in the end,

31:00whatever you say it is.

31:01Quick detour.

31:02Every month there's a story that never goes to YouTube,

31:05it's there if you want it.

31:07Patreon, link below.

31:09Now, where were we?

31:10And the people who understand that better than anyone,

31:13the men who gave their entire lives to this mountain,

31:16were disgusted.

31:18Ming Ma Ji,

31:19the guide whose rogue team forced the route through the icefall back in April,

31:23watched everything that came through the door he opened.

31:26And when it was all over,

31:28he didn't take a victory lap,

31:29he went public.

31:31He told the world that officials had been fully prepared to let the season die,

31:35rather than solve the problem themselves.

31:38That he and five other men had absorbed all the risk,

31:41all the liability,

31:42all the blame if anyone died on that route.

31:45And that afterward,

31:46the industry that profited from their work

31:49couldn't even be bothered to formally recognize them.

31:52And then he said he would not summit Everest ever again.

31:55I can only imagine how disgusted he must have felt

31:58to walk away from a mountain he risked his life on months earlier.

32:03Then there's Kami Rita Sherpa.

32:06If Everest has a living embodiment,

32:08it's him.

32:09This season is his 32nd time to stand on this mountain.

32:13And the most experienced Everest climber in history said plainly

32:17that authorities need to control these numbers.

32:20This is a man whose entire livelihood depends on climbers coming here.

32:24And yet,

32:25here he was,

32:26publicly asking the government to sell fewer permits.

32:29And honestly,

32:30when you look at what was left behind

32:32at the end of this season,

32:34it's hard to argue against that.

32:36Take a look at this video.

32:38This is the South Cole at 26,000 feet.

32:41See those shredded tents flapping on their frames?

32:44And hundreds of empty oxygen cylinders?

32:46You zoom in,

32:47and it gets even worse.

32:49Steel bowls,

32:50food waste,

32:51human waste.

32:52On a mountain many worship and consider sacred.

32:56There are rules on paper against this.

32:58Strict rules, in fact.

33:00Every climber is supposed to bring down

33:0210 pounds of waste,

33:03or lose a $4,000 garbage deposit

33:06that gets forfeited if they don't comply.

33:09It sounds serious,

33:10but for a client paying $70,000,

33:13a $4,000 deposit

33:15is nothing.

33:17The deposit gets forfeited,

33:18the garbage stays,

33:19and everyone goes home,

33:21leaving the highest place on Earth,

33:23one of the planet's most remarkable monuments,

33:26as a garbage dump.

33:27To be fair,

33:29Nepal is trying to fix this,

33:31on paper at least.

33:32Nepal's parliament has a bill

33:34that would require anyone attempting Everest

33:36to first summit a 23,000 foot peak

33:39inside Nepal.

33:41It sounds like the exact filter

33:42this mountain has needed for 30 years.

33:45It's not law yet,

33:47but it has passed exactly one

33:49of Nepal's two chambers.

33:50No one knows how long

33:52it will take to come into effect.

33:53But even if it passed exactly as written,

33:56and every future Everest climber

33:59came to Everest

33:59with a previous 23,000 foot certificate,

34:02it would have saved

34:03almost nobody in this video.

34:06A certificate wouldn't have touched

34:07permit sharing,

34:09and the loopholes

34:09that let two companies

34:11argue over a dying man

34:12for five days.

34:14It doesn't cap permit numbers,

34:16it doesn't create a rescue service,

34:18and most damning of them all,

34:20it doesn't stop summit fever.

34:23A record 1,008 people

34:25stood on the summit this spring,

34:27and this wasn't the first time

34:29this has happened.

34:30In May 1996,

34:32companies competing over clients

34:34led to one of the deadliest days

34:36in Everest history.

34:37And when the world needed

34:38someone to blame,

34:40they chose this man.

34:41Here is why that was a lie.

2026’s Everest Season Was Built on Betrayal and Death

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