Everest, Inc.

Featuring original interviews with Everest mountain guides and climbers, this is a fast-moving, nuanced account of the peaks transformation from the ultimate mountaineering challenge into a booming business opportunity (Joshua Hammer, New York Times bestselling author). Anyone who has read Jon Krakauers Into Thin Air or has seen a recent photo of climbers standing in line to get to the top of Everest may think they have a sense of what the worlds highest mountain is like. Its an extreme landscape where bad weather and incredible altitude can kill; an overcrowded, trashed-out recreation destination; and a place where the rich exploit local Sherpas while padding their egosand social media feeds. Theres some truth to these clichs, but theyre a sliver of the story. Unlike any book to date, Everest, Inc. is the definitive account of how a few daring entrepreneurs paired raw courage and naked ambition to get paying clients safely up and down Everest. Until the late eighties, such a thing was considered impossible. Within a few years, Everest guiding was a burgeoning industry. Today, ninety percent of the people on the mountain are clients or employees of guided expeditions. Studded with quotes from original interviews with more than a hundred Western and Sherpa climbers, clients, writers, and filmmakersincluding Jimmy Chin and Conrad AnkerEverest, Inc. foregrounds the colorful voices of the people who have made the mountain what it is today. As professional climber and author Freddie Wilkinson says, Whether you are thinking about taking a crack at the worlds highest peak or are simply an armchair mountaineer trying to make sense of the complex dynamics driving the modern Everest industry, Everest, Inc. should be required reading.