Hillary Step

The Hillary Step was a 40-foot vertical rock face that sat 8,790 metres (28,839 ft) above sea level on the southeast ridge of Mount Everest. Located halfway between the "South Summit" and the true summit, the Hillary Step was the most technically difficult part of the typical Nepal-side Everest climb and the last real challenge before reaching the top of the mountain. The rock face was destroyed by an 2015 earthquake.
Located in the death zone, the Hillary Step was Class 4 on the climbing-difficulty scale. One expedition noted that climbing the Hillary Step was "strenuous" and offered little to no escape from unpredictable, rapidly changing weather.
Heavy snowfall can enable climbers to bypass Hillary, by way of snow and ice climbing.
The Hillary Step has claimed several climbers' lives. In 1997, author Anatoli Boukreev found the body of Bruce Herrod hanging from ropes at the base of the step, a year after his attempt.
The step was closed during the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition by the First Assault Party of Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans when they reached the South Summit on 26 May at 13:00, too late to continue on. Seated on the snow dome, they could look closely at the last 90 m (300 ft) ascent to the summit. It was not the gentle snow ridge they had hoped for, but a thin crest of snow and ice on rock, steep on the left, overhanging as a cornice on the right. It was interrupted by a formidable-looking 12 m (40 ft) rock step two-thirds of the way up.
The step was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who partnered with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, on 29 May 1953 climbing the crack between the snow and the rock, earning the feature its name. Upon completion of the summit, the pair reported the snowpack on Hillary is harder than that of lower elevation.
In his 1953 account of summiting Everest he wrote:
In more recent years, the ascent and descent over the Step were generally made with the assistance of fixed ropes, usually placed there by the first ascending team of the season. In a good climbing situation, it was about a two-hour climb from the South Summit to the Hillary Step, one to two hours to climb the cliff, and then another 20 minutes from the top of the Hillary Step to the summit of Mount Everest. Only one climber at a time could traverse it. With increasing numbers of people climbing the mountain, the Step frequently became a bottleneck, with climbers forced to wait for their turn on the ropes and thereby slowing the flow of people up and down the mountain.
Before 2015, the descending sequence along Everest's southeast ridge was:
It was suspected in 2016 that the April 2015 Nepal earthquake had altered the Hillary Step, but there was so much snow it was not clear whether it had truly changed. Kenton Cool wrote that the Hillary Step "is only 12 to 15 feet [3.7 to 4.6 m] high." In May 2017, Tim Mosedale and other climbers reported that "the Hillary Step is no more", although the full extent and interpretation of the changes were still nascent. Another climber who thought the Step changed by 2016 was six-time Everest summiter David Liaño Gonzalez, who summited in 2013 and 2016, when the relevant changes are reported to have occurred. However, some important Nepalese climbers, including Ang Tshering Sherpa, chairman of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, reported that the Step was still intact but covered in more snow than before. Later in the year, after seeing a large exhibition of photos from 2006 to 2016, he did agree that at least the upper portion of the step had indeed changed.
Peter Hillary, Edmund Hillary's son, was asked his opinion about the Step based on photos. He agreed it was there in part, but seemed to think it had undergone some sort of a change, noting especially what looked like a fresh broken rock. By early June 2017, more reports and photographic evidence came in, with Garrett Madison reporting that the step had conclusively changed. Dave Hahn, who has climbed Everest 15 times, was shown photos and agreed that it was changed. A special kind of mourning hit the community with realization of missing rocks and freshly hewn scars of new coloured rock at this landmark feature. Hahn noted how it was a great tribute to Hillary and Tenzing and he thought of them whenever he scrambled over it.
Later in 2017, mountaineering guide and trained photographer Lhakpa Rangdu mounted a photo exhibition at the Nepal Tourism Board showing how the Hillary Step area had changed. Rangdu has climbed Everest multiple times since 2005, including before and after the big Nepal earthquake. The combination of these skills—high-altitude photography and mountaineering—allowed him to provide a photographic history of the Hillary Step, and he has said that it is indeed gone.
27°59′14″N 86°55′32″E﻿ / ﻿27.9871066°N 86.9256306°E﻿ / 27.9871066; 86.9256306