Khumbu Icefall on Everest: Theodore Fairhurst's Helmet-Camera Video

Theodore Fairhurst's helmet-camera film takes you straight into the Khumbu Icefall, the most notorious stretch of the standard route up Mount Everest from Nepal. Aluminium ladders bridge crevasses, towers of ice lean overhead and the climber in front edges forward one step at a time. Fairhurst, a Canadian mountaineer, filmed the descent from the Western Cwm to Base Camp, and the clip has passed 4.4 million views on YouTube.

Where the Khumbu Icefall sits on Everest

The icefall lies at the head of the Khumbu Glacier and the foot of the Western Cwm, on the Nepalese side of Everest, at about 5,486 metres, just above Everest Base Camp and southwest of the summit. It is the first great obstacle on the South Col route, and Camp I usually sits just above its upper edge.

Here the glacier pours over a steep step in the valley. The ice drops about 600 metres over 1.5 km of horizontal distance, and the glacier moves an estimated 0.9 to 1.2 metres a day, so a block of ice takes around four years to travel through the fall. The result is a maze of crevasses that can be more than 100 metres deep and often 15 metres wide, and seracs, ice towers that can collapse without warning.

Ladders, ropes and an early start

Each season, a route through the icefall is fixed with ropes and ladders by professional teams. Because the glacier keeps moving, that route has to be maintained and repaired constantly. Ladders are often lashed end to end to span the widest gaps, which is exactly what Fairhurst's camera shows.

• Before sunrise: most climbers start in the dark, when the ice is coldest and most stable.
• Afternoon danger: as the sun warms the glacier, movement speeds up, and mid-to-late afternoon is generally the riskiest time to be in the fall.
• Crossing time: fit, acclimatised climbers can get through in a few hours; inexperienced or unacclimatised climbers may need 10 to 12.

The icefall's human cost

The Himalayan Database records 44 deaths in the icefall between 1953 and 2016. The worst single accident came at about 6:30 a.m. on 18 April 2014, when an avalanche killed 16 Nepalese climbers who were preparing the route for the spring season; nine others were injured. Decades earlier, on 5 April 1970, a falling serac killed six Sherpas working on a Canadian documentary about Yūichirō Miura, who became the first person to ski down Everest. These numbers are a reminder that the people who build and carry loads through the icefall face its dangers far more often than the climbers they serve.

Theodore Fairhurst and his Everest film

Fairhurst was born in 1947 in Westmount, Quebec, and built a real estate business in Montreal before turning to high-altitude mountaineering. He reached the summit of Everest on 23 May 2010, at the age of 63. His Mount Everest ICE FALL video was voted into the top ten at the 2011 Killarney Adventure Film Festival.

He kept going: on 9 December 2018, aged 71, he became the oldest person to complete both the Seven Summits and the Volcanic Seven Summits, and the first North American to do so. His helmet camera offers what wide photographs of Everest cannot, a climber's-eye view of the ladders, ropes and ice that make up the first day on the mountain.

Explore more: Everest from the perspective of its workers; walking on a very different glacier tour.

Related reading:

• The Balance of Powder: A Sherpas Cinema Film
• This Is Skiing!
• We Ride: The People and Culture of Snowboarding

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