Trekking to Everest Base Camp with 800 pounds of camera gear
Some 40,000 people trek to Everest Base Camp in Nepal every year. This past spring, a crew from 60 Minutes joined them – hiking for 10 days, sometimes on all fours, in all kinds of weather.
The trip began at the gateway to Mount Everest at Lukla, one of the most dangerous airports in the world. It ended roughly 50 miles later at Everest's Base Camp, sitting at an elevation of 17,598 feet. Nima Rinji Sherpa led 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega as she and her crew made the trek with 800 pounds of camera gear.
"When you go to Everest, you can feel the energy that you are so small," he said. "You have to have a really, like, an iron heart to know why you are here. You cannot say, 'I'm just here for fun.' You cannot. That's the worst thing that you can convince yourself."
Starting the trek to Base Camp
After arriving at Lukla, where a short, unforgiving runaway is carved into the edge of a cliff, the six-person team from 60 Minutes met with porters, who strapped camera gear to their backs and heads before setting off on the trail.
The crew began the journey, dodging yaks and mules at 9,337 feet. Prayer wheels, believed to send blessings, mark the way. Climbers learn mountain etiquette quickly. The sound of warning bells means "get out of the way, fast."
Porters, often overloaded with almost twice their body weight, rule the fast lane up to Base Camp of the world's tallest mountain.
In all, it will be a 50-mile trek and an 8,261-foot climb to Base Camp. The team from 60 Minutes spent months training and studying the route, yet Vega said nothing could prepare her for walking across a suspension bridge 45 stories above a roaring gorge below.
"I am not looking down, don't talk," Vega said. "Oh, God. Oh! It's windy. I do not like this at all."
Nima said fear is common.
"Of course, you are scared but you have to balance it in a way that you can be confident you know when you do things," he said.
For him, there's a spiritual connection to Everest.
"I think if there is no Everest, we will still be farming, we'll still be looking after the yaks, the goats," Nima said. "The mountain has given us, like, a meaning to life, I think."
Halfway through the trek
By day five, it was a battle for Vega between her lungs and gravity. By about 13,500 feet, there was no holding inner thoughts in, she said.
"This is really hard. They can catch me on the camera taking a break, I don't care," Vega said.
After eight hours of trekking, the crew arrived in Phortse, the remote village where Nima trained to become a mountaineer. The 60 Minutes team was welcomed with ceremonial scarves, a symbol of honor and respect.
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Conrad Anker, Nima's mentor and one of America's top mountaineers, greeted the team.
After sleeping in a teahouse, the team left Phortse behind and began the push toward 14,500 feet, taller than most mountains in the U.S.
The team stopped about 10 miles from Base Camp at a 600-year-old Buddhist monastery to receive a blessing meant to keep climbers safe. Monks tie a thin cord around climbers' necks.
Nearing Base Camp
After eight days of trekking, the team was nearing a critical threshold when the body can begin to falter. Every breath delivered less oxygen as the team gained altitude.
In extreme cases, when the brain swells and lungs fill with fluid, severe altitude sickness can be fatal. It's why the team didn't take the easy way up in a helicopter; the body needs the slow ascent to acclimatize.
At one point along the path are memorials for climbers who have passed away. About one in three deaths on Everest is a Sherpa. In 2023 alone, 18 people died — the most in one year. Climbers often die so high up that their bodies are almost impossible to recover.
It got much colder as the team neared Base Camp. Nima said it could drop to 5 degrees Fahrenheit that night.
"Oof. That's brutal," Vega said.
Meanwhile, the porters, who'd carried all of the 60 Minutes gear up the mountain, had already made it to Base Camp and were headed back down, on to their next job.
"Look at them, they're running down the mountain. I'm barely making it up and they're coming back down already. This is amazing," Vega said.
Reaching Base Camp
Vega caught her first glimpse of Everest Base Camp after 10 days of climbing. The camp sits on top of the Khumbu Glacier, where the ice constantly shifts and melts.
"It's freezing, my nose feels like it's going to fall off," Vega said.
At 17,598 feet above sea level, it's like breathing through a straw. Vega's lips were blue, but she and the team had made it.
"I was like, am I going to make this? Do I need a helicopter? So nice to see you. Namaste. Thank you."
Overnight in Base Camp
The two nights in Base Camp tested Vega's resilience. Breathing, eating and sleeping are a struggle there. The bathroom is a bed of rocks in a flapping tent.
Wind is brutal, the cold piercing and the terrain offers no shelter from the elements, she said.
Italian helicopter pilot Simone Moro, who flies rescue missions on Everest, said you can't imagine how many people go to Everest without enough preparation.
"They start to feel bad. And if I don't go and pick them, and quickly took them down, they die for pulmonary edema, cerebral edema," Moro said. "And this happen quite often, even in the night while they are sleeping in the lodge. In the morning they go, they try to wake up and they are dead."
An avalanche stopped just short of the tents 60 Minutes stayed in at Base Camp. It was one of many that followed a 5.5-magnitude earthquake while the 60 Minutes team was on the mountain.
"We felt the stress. I heard the avalanche all night," Vega said.