Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World

Featuring original interviews with Everest mountain guides and climbers, this is “a fast-moving, nuanced account of the peak’s transformation from the ultimate mountaineering challenge into a booming business opportunity” (Joshua Hammer, New York Times bestselling author).

Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer’s 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 world’s highest mountain is like. It’s 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 egos—and social media feeds.

There’s some truth to these clichés, but they’re 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 filmmakers—including Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker—