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Snow-covered mountain peaks, including Mount Everest, illuminated by golden sunlight, casting shadows on the slopes under a clear sky.
Lifestyle

A new path to the top of the world

A French-Nepali team is building a new route up Mount Everest that avoids the Khumbu Icefall. Due to the popularity of Mount Everest, as well as increased fragility of the icefall due to climate change, this part of the route is exceptionally risky. Team member Antoine Erout joined The World to discuss.

The World
Updated on

A view of Mount Everest.

Courtesy of Théo Livet

Attempting to summit Mount Everest is a dangerous endeavor. Dangerous, and increasingly, popular.

It’s become normal for more than 1,000 people to try and climb the mountain in a single year.

And that is putting too many people onto what is considered by many to be the riskiest part of the mountain, for too long: the Khumbu Icefall.

“We are talking about a glacier,” said Antoine Erout, a French climber, describing massive ice blocks “something like a building of several stories, which are moving … every day [they are] changing.”

Base camp and the Khumbu Icefall, from a distance.Courtesy of Théo Livet

Erout is part of a team of French and Nepali climbers and Sherpas trying to avoid the Khumbu Icefall all together, by establishing a new route up to the summit.

“So many people have died while crossing this icefall,” said “Speed” Kaji Sherpa, a famous Nepali Sherpa and member of the team, by text. He said between 1953 and 2023, 47 people died in the Khumbu icefall; 16 of those deaths happened in 2014 alone.

The new route, according to Kaji Sherpa, will offer an alternative that saves lives. The World’s Host Marco Werman spoke with Erout, who joined from Paris, about how the new path will work.

Marco Werman: So, let’s talk about the project you’re working on, which is establishing this new route up the mountain from Nepal that avoids the Khumbu Icefall.

What is different about this route? What’s the path that this new route is going to take?
Antoine Erout: Yes, this route goes beside the Khumbu Icefall. So, we go around, we turn around the Khumbu Icefall and we get access to Camp 1 on the normal route.

This new route goes through a rocky path, and the idea is to install a kind of via ferrata, which is an Italian word to describe steel bars, kind of [like] steps, in order to ease the climbing by the porter, the Sherpa. A kind of Plan B.
A projection of the path the new route will follow. It avoids the Khumbu Icefall and reconnects at Camp 1.Courtesy Antoine Erout and Marc Batard
As you said, Antoine, in this project to map a new route up Everest, there are French climbers and, importantly, Nepali climbers involved in the project.

French climbers, they travel to Everest and back to France. Nepali climbers, they live there and are often the guides or the Sherpas leading these climbing parties. Who is this new route really designed for?
Definitely Sherpas [and] porters.

The route and Everest in general allow many Nepalese in the region, in the Khumbu region, to work every year. This is their job and a very significant revenue or income source.

Foreign climbers, of course, have to pay. This is quite expensive. This is a very challenging project for every kind of climber. We want to save [everybody’s lives], but the priority is for Nepalese who are supposed to go through the Khumbu Icefall several times during the climbing season.
Project leader Marc Batard works on installing part of the via ferrata along the new route. Courtesy of Théo Livet
They’re exposed to a lot more risk.
Exactly.
It seems appropriate, and relevant, because I understand that almost a third of all deaths on Everest have been Sherpas.
Exactly. [And] of course, Nepal is [also exposed] to earthquakes. And unfortunately, several years ago during an earthquake event, 15 Sherpas lost their life in the Khumbu Icefall, because of the falling of huge, massive ice blocks.
Three climbers wearing helmets and harnesses are scaling a rocky cliff, with ropes securing them to the rock face.
Team members work on building the via ferrata on the first wall of the new route.Courtesy of Antoine Erout and Marc Batard
What a tragedy.

Antoine, how do you actually come up with a new route up Everest? It’s not like you can tell the GPS on your phone, “show me alternative routes.”
Actually, it was the idea of Marc Batard, the leader of the expedition, together with Speed Kaji, who is a very famous Sherpa in Nepal.

First, in 2021, [Marc] did a helicopter flight trying to find a new route. And in 2022, he found a way, [he saw it] was possible to have an alternative route. And since then, we are pushing to make it official.

[So] hopefully this year, 2026, will be the year of finalizing this … project.
A person in an orange plaid jacket and white shirt is sitting on a terrace with colorful prayer flags in the background.
“Speed” Kaji Sherpa is a key part of the team establishing the new route. His nickname is “Speed” because he broke a speed record on Everest set by his colleague, Marc Batard.Courtesy of Théo Livet
You know, Antoine, every year it seems that pictures of lines of people climbing up Everest just surpassed the lines from the year before. Are there too many people in the world climbing up the Everest?
…Yes.

We need to consider that Everest has become very commercial. And unfortunately, due to, I would say, the “business” around the mountains, and especially Everest, we have [inexperienced] people [who are] not even trained. Some of them never climb[ed] a mountain before going to Everest. But just because they have [$50,000 or maybe $70,000] to spend on a summit photo, we expose many people to death.

This is the problem. This is probably something wrong.
Mountain range at dawn with peaks and dark silhouettes against a clear sky, and a layer of clouds in the valley.
The Himalaya mountains.Courtesy of Théo Livet
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