DavidBreashears

Generally several months of smoking and drinking heavily to stress my body for the rigors of climbing on Everest.

The 1996 Everest disaster was a terrible tragedy and many peoples lives were greatly affected by it. It is only normal in life that people observing the exact same event will later on recount it in a different manner, especially life threatening events. This is a known phenomenon none of us is an objective observer. The truth usually lies in the middle of many different opinions.

Yes, many but I am not free to talk about it ;-)

The overcrowding certainly creates many challenges for everyone involved on mountain. This problem needs to be solved by the Western guiding services, the government of Nepal, and the Sherpa climbing community working together to decide what's best for the mountain and for the 100s of climbers who attempt to reach the summit every year.

But for me the more urgent question and the reason I founded GlacierWorks is to bring attention to the impact that climate change is having on the region and the possibility of those impacts to cause social and environmental stress in the future.

I've made a documentary about Mallory and Irvine, and co-written a book about Mallory and Irvine and consulted with many prominent climbers about the route and its challenges. My thinking is there is no chance whatsoever they could have climbed the route with the gear and technical abilities of the era.