Hillary Step

The Hillary Step is a nearly vertical rock face, 40 ft high on Mount Everest, located approximately 28,840 feet above sea level. It is located on the South East ridge, halfway between the "South Summit" and the true summit and is the last real challenge before reaching the top of the mountain via the South East route. The Step was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who was the first person, along with Tenzing Norgay, to scale it on the way to the summit.

Ascent and descent of the Hillary Step is generally made with the assistance of fixed ropes, usually placed there by the first ascending team of the season. With increasing numbers of people climbing the mountain in recent years, the Step has frequently become a bottleneck, with climbers forced to wait significant amounts of time for their turn on the ropes, leading to problems in getting climbers efficiently up and down the mountain.
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Coordinates:  27°59'14"N 86°55'32"E

Comments

  • Traffic jam at Mount Everest ! Great !!
  • thats so high my man...............
  • *slip* AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
  • watch your step ......... up here.
  • One slip, oops bye bye. Too long a wait, well too bad, really if you wanted to you could kill someone up here.
  • what about the ropes we leave behind...?is it not poluttion...?! not to mention the rest i propose a cleaning expedition to mt everest, where the main objetcive will not be reaching the summit but leave the goodess more beautiful\cleaner. putting egos aside and truly respect nature. good example for the world and good plublicity too. COME ON GUYS LETS DO IT
  • Can we take a helicopter there, may be with stored oxygen etc.?
  • helicopter=) u make me laughing=) helicopter =) ha ha
  • can you not install cable cars towards the summit and on the way back,let the climbers ride a glider down! that would make things faster and everybody who goes there will be happy and come back "vertical" not "horizontal"-inside a wooden box!
  • a unique path way... hmmm i can buy that step from nepal government and make good deal of chaeging the climbers ..;)
  • sherparochahotmail, The Nepal government spends millions of dollars a year taking the environment into consideration around and on the Everest mountain. It's one of the reasons for the high permit fees for climbing the mountain, it allows the government to clean up used canisters of oxygen, trash and other things left on-the-rocks. As for ropes, they are not usually a problem, the first team that ascends the Hillary Step are often the ones who set in stone the ropes. These ropes are only taken down at the end of the season, around May. Sometimes the ropes are taken down by the last descending team, but oftentimes, by a group of Sherpa's.
  • Esclator, have the sherpas run 220 to the top, enough to power a frier so macdonalds can build a rest area up there. run by sherpas of course, just to keep with the culture thingy
  • They can't operate that high
  • They can't even clean up oxygen bottles .. Two much work at that altitude... Also the dead remain cuz it's too hard to extradite ... No way can anyone get supplies up to and work at that altitude... People die just walking to the top.. Let alone working up there
  • Hillary, Tenjing Step - Himalaya Kingdom of Nepal
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This article was last modified 13 years ago