The latest dispatch from the National Geographic 50th Everest Anniversary Expedition: The team is making final preparations for the ascent of the world's highest mountain.
The margin of safety is razor-thin for climbers challenging Mount Everest. Some hazards—thundering avalanches, freak storms, hidden crevasses—are obvious. The slow mental and physical deterioration caused by thinning air at altitudes above 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) can be just as deadly. Full story and photo gallery
The National Geographic 50th Everest Anniversary Expedition is expected to make its attempt to climb to the top of the world within the next two days. Peter Hillary and Brent Bishop, sons of legendary Everest mountaineers Sir Edmund Hillary and Barry Bishop, are approaching the summit via different routes. Jamling Norgay, son of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who summitted Everest with Sir Edmund in 1953, is also part of the expedition, but will remain at Base Camp to coordinate communications.
High winds have forced the National Geographic 50th Everest Anniversary Expedition to postpone its twin attempts to climb to the summit of the world's highest mountain. The climbers hope to try again on Tuesday or Wednesday.
The South Pacific's Vanuatu is an 80-island nation without traffic lights, street postal service, or even a McDonalds. What it lacks in 21st-century amenities, it makes up for with traditional culture. Vanuatu hosts some of the most remote and untouched bush tribes in the world. Zoltan Istvan introduces us to these tribes tonight on our U.S. cable television program National Geographic Today.
A team of climbers and filmmakers commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first successful climbing of Mount Everest hopes to reach the summit Saturday morning (Friday night EST). The National Geographic 50th Anniversary Everest Expedition has faced illness, crowds, and high winds that have delayed its climb. This is the last attempt this group will make to get to the top of the mountain.
"It was a tough trip, with a great finale," said Peter Hillary, now relaxing at home in New Zealand after reaching the summit of Mount Everest last month. He was part of an eight-person expedition that scaled the world's highest peak to mark the historic first ascent of the mountain by his father, Edmund Hillary, and Tenzing Norgay half a century ago.
The landscape of Mount Everest has changed significantly since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first conquered the peak in 1953—and the biggest cause may be the warming global climate, according to researchers. The glacier that once came close to Hillary and Norgay's first camp has retreated three miles (five kilometers), for example.
Waging a "little war against a big mountain," the National Geographic Society-sponsored 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition placed the first Americans atop the world's highest peak and pioneered a new route to the summit.
More than 20 expeditions are expected to be climbing on Everest in this 50th summer after the world's highest peak was first successfully scaled. Amongst them is a team that was selected from more than 30,000 amateurs from across India. Mission Everest, sponsored by National Geographic Channel India, will be accompanied by an elite team of climbers from the Indian and Nepalese armies.
During the long, cold winter the wilderness of Alaska and the Yukon is not what one would think of as bicycle country. Yet as the northern spring approaches, the "Bikes on Ice" adventure is re-enacting two amazing cycling feats from the region's hectic gold rush past.
This month Conrad Anker returns to Everest, but not for a summit attempt. Rather, the elite mountaineer will provide color commentary for Global Extremes: Mt. Everest, the latest—and perhaps inevitable—reality television program that aims to send five amateur climbers to the summit.
Hollywood director James Cameron has returned to the Titanic's storied shipwreck, this time with unmanned robots and deep-sea submersibles. His new 3-D IMAX documentary, The Ghosts of the Abyss, explores rooms unseen since 1912. Science correspondent Chad Cohen talks with Cameron tonight on our U.S. cable television program National Geographic Today. Full story and photogallery:
When Hillary summited Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, he surveyed an utterly pristine place. Nearly 50 years later, the scene surrounding the world's tallest peak is starkly different: traffic jams, high-paying clients, piles of trash, and plans for the world's highest cybercafé.
This week, the world's highest medical clinic opened at Mount Everest Base Camp. The tent-based clinic seeks to treat climbers and porters for high altitude sickness, frost bite, and other ailments during the April and May climbing season. National Geographic Adventure magazine recently spoke with Luane Freer, the American doctor behind the operation.
