New Delhi, India
CNN
—
At the top of the world amid pristine white glaciers and towering rock, silence reigns. Suddenly it is broken by a ladder falling from the sky.
Milan Pandey is sitting back down at Everest Base Camp, looking out over views that few have ever seen — and he got there without having to pull on a crampon or wield an ice ax. He is a drone pilot, and his work may change things on the world’s highest mountain forever.
The ladders, ropes and oxygen cylinders that Pandey can transport via drone to aid the Sherpas or “icefall doctors” at Khumbu Icefall, a glacier located between Base Camp and Camp One, could likely save lives on the mountain.
Specialist Sherpas who hail from the nearby hills and mountains have been navigating and setting the trail for climbers on Everest for seven decades. Dozens have lost their lives in the process. Pandey, of Airlift Technology, a local drone-mapping start-up, believes that with his technical expertise in using drones combined with the Sherpas’ decades of mountaineering knowledge, they can make it safer to be on the roof of the world.
Base Camp is located at a height of about 5,364 meters (17,598 ft) above sea level and Camp One at 6,065 meters (19,900 feet).
The aerial distance between the two points is roughly 1.8 miles. It takes Sherpas six to seven hours to make this journey, but it takes a drone about six to seven minutes.
Mingma G Sherpa of Imagine Nepal, an expedition company that’s been guiding climbers for nearly a decade, recognized the need for this kind of assistance when he lost three of his friends and mountain guides in an avalanche in 2023. Their bodies could not be recovered.
“They had to keep going up and down the mountain twenty times to first figure out the route and then come back for the equipment. I had heard they use drones in China to help with this on another mountain, so I thought ‘why not here?’” he said.
Around the same time, Raj Bikram, CEO of Airlift Nepal, was in touch with the Khumbu municipality for 3D-mapping Mount Everest using drones when the region’s mayor asked how much weight the drones could carry. In April 2024, with the help of two drones donated by China’s DJI, Airlift began experimenting.
“In the beginning, because it was also our first time at the Everest Base Camp, we were not sure how the drone would perform at that altitude and at that temperature,” Bikram said. Visibility and wind speeds are among the main challenges. It took a month for them to learn the terrain.
Airlift Nepal’s first clean-up drive used a drone to bring down about 1100 pounds of trash from Camp One to Base Camp.
That took more than 40 flights: The drone can carry about 66 pounds of weight, but they only transport about 44 pounds at a time to be safe.
For the 2025 Everest climbing season, Pandey says that Airlift Technology will help Sherpas transport equipment before the season starts, then pick up trash once it begins.
The Sherpas tell Pandey which direction they need to go, then Pandey flies a small drone first to navigate the trail. Then, the Sherpas do what they’ve always done — climb to the precarious icefalls, or the parts of a glacier that are the hardest to navigate.
“Once they find out ‘here we need a ladder,’ ‘here we need a rope,’ they will send us the coordinates via walkie-talkie and then we fly the equipment there,” Pandey explained. The drones are also able to fly in life-saving equipment like oxygen cylinders and medicines.
Airlift currently has two DJI drones, only one of which is being operated on Everest this year. The second one is a backup, and if there’s need for more drone flights, they’ll consider deploying both.
One challenge is money. Each drone costs $70,000, and that’s before they even begin operating.
“Everything is expensive at Base Camp,” Bikram said.
“Because there’s no electricity we need a lot of fuel to charge batteries. The cost of actually getting to the camp, the manpower cost, accommodation, food, there’s a lot.”
For Bikram, an aeronautical engineer, drones have always been a passion. He made a “DIY Drone” in Nepal over a decade ago at a time when they were almost nonexistent in the country. This proved vital in assisting aid efforts during the 2015 Nepal earthquake.
“It’s not just that we are providing equipment. Search and rescue is one of our main priorities. When people veer off the trail we can help geolocate them,” Pandey added.
Some in the Sherpa community are turning away from working in the perilous high mountains and instead are moving abroad for better jobs and pay.
“We hope that our drones will actually make this a safer profession and bring more people back to this climbing tradition. It’s what our country is known for, and without the expertise of the Sherpas we would never be able to navigate this terrain,” Pandey said.
28-year-old Dawa Janzu Sherpa has been a “frontman” on Everest with the icefall doctors for eight years. The team of Sherpas is led by an elder who has developed his expertise in navigation and decides the trail, but it is the frontman with his might and youth who goes to the icefall first.
“This season there is a lot of dry ice which makes it very hard to fix trails, and there are a lot of ice towers in between,” he said. While drones can now be used to determine a tentative path before they set out, inclement weather means that things are constantly changing.
Janzu Sherpa says this is a risky job, and with employment hard to come by, for him, this work has been more about the paycheck than the passion. Drones have been reducing time and risk level by half.
“Our work is time sensitive. If we don’t fix the trails quickly upcoming expeditions will be slowed down, so having the drones bring the equipment up means that we don’t have to go back down just to bring the ladder up with us.”
“With the bad weather we’ve seen so far this year we would not have fixed the trail in time if not for that help,” he added.
Janzu Sherpa is the sole breadwinner for his wife and two daughters. “This is an adventurous job and there is a lot of risk, so if there’s a way to make it safer I welcome it.”
The first group of climbers have reached Base Camp for the 2025 climbing season. It’s a narrow season, so almost everyone will attempt their ascents in April and May.
Drone use “is part of the evolution of climbing,” says Caroline Ogle of New Zealand-based Adventure Consultants, who has spent five seasons at Base Camp managing expeditions from what she refers to as “the amphitheater of Everest.”
“If you compare back to the early years … when there were no satellite phones or the kind of weather forecasting we have available now, all those types of technology have evolved to make climbing safer. I feel the use of drones is part of that natural evolution, particularly in the context of making things safer for the high altitude workers (Sherpas),” Ogle said.
Lisa Thompson, who has climbed the seven summits — the highest peak on all seven of the traditional continents — and now trains climbers through US based Alpine Athletics, agrees with Ogle and sees drones as a “welcome and responsible evolution.”
“I don’t believe this innovation takes away from the craft or tradition of climbing. The mountain is still the mountain. The challenge is still real.”
