Where expeditions wait and the icefall begins
The south base camp, on the Nepali side, was set up by the expeditions of the early 1950s that first approached Everest through Khumbu after Nepal opened to foreigners. In 1953 the British expedition led by John Hunt established its camp near here, and on 29 May Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit. Since then base camp has moved slightly from year to year with the glacier, which flows and melts beneath it.
Each spring, from around late March to the end of May, base camp becomes a seasonal town: dining tents, kitchen tents, communications domes and helipads, with Sherpa cooks, climbers, doctors and support staff. A team of Sherpa specialists called the Icefall Doctors fixes ladders and ropes through the Khumbu Icefall, the most dangerous section of the route. Before climbing, each team holds a puja, a blessing ceremony at a stone altar, asking permission of the mountain.
Base camp has also seen grief. On 18 April 2014 an ice avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 Nepali climbing guides, the deadliest day on Everest until then. A year later, on 25 April 2015, the Gorkha earthquake triggered an avalanche that struck base camp itself. Memorials at Thukla, on the trail below Lobuche, remember many who died on the mountain.
