Safety & Advisories

Everest's Most Famous Rock Wall Vanished in an Earthquake. Nepal Spent Years Saying It Hadn't.

Climbers came home with before-and-after photos. Nepal's tourism department told them not to talk about it. Here's what actually happened to the…

By Laxman Rawal · Aug 1, 2026

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In May 2017, a British mountain guide named Tim Mosedale climbed past the last real obstacle before Everest's summit and posted a photograph that Nepal's government did not want him to post. It's official, he wrote: the Hillary Step is no more. Nepali…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

The wall that made Hillary famous

Ask a mountaineer what stood between Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay and the first summit of Everest in 1953, and most will name the Hillary Step before anything else. It was a near-vertical band of rock and ice roughly 12 metres tall, wedged into the ridge…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

Before and after — and a government that said not to look

When climbers did return, several reported the Step had changed beyond recognition. Mosedale's post triggered the first public argument in May 2017. Days later, American guide Garrett Madison released a side-by-side comparison, the same rock face shot in 2011…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

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