* Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, crime increased at 17,500 feet. Often it took the form of small-time thievery, requiring locks on many tent-door zippers, but there were some brutal assaults.

STACY ALLISON: [In 1988] we actually had to kick a Sherpa out of Base Camp. He had become very difficult. And he got very mad at the Korean leader, pulled a knife on him. We had to restrain him, tie him up. Isn't that awful? We weren't sure what he was going to do if we let him go. Ultimately, he was escorted down off Base Camp.

HEIDI HOWKINS: Violence is not unusual. Some people say it's because climbers' personalities tend to be deviant. I don't think it's just that. I think it's also because the process of acclimatization, of generating red blood cells, is very hormonal. And it primarily involves estrogen, right, which is the thing that upsets women's attitudes and psychology every month. I always approach Base Camp with the attitude: OK, here's 300 men who have PMS and really don't know what's going on. And then it all makes sense.

TODD BURLESON: One year these Russians were in camp, and everybody seemed to be climbing illegally. One of the cooks got really mad about that and he picked up a huge boulder and smacked it on top of the leader's head. And so he's laying there unconscious, and this guy is about to finish him off when Pete [Athans] jumped him from behind and tied him up. The Russians wanted justice for this attack, they wanted to send him to jail. But we came in with our own version of high-altitude justice. We decided that the punishment for climbing illegally was getting smacked in the head with a rock.

* The 1990s saw the biggest increase in the number of commercially guided trips. No longer did you have to be an experienced mountaineer with dozens of Himalayan peaks on your résumé. All you needed to get a spot on a team was a pulse—and $64,000. The unexpected consequence was a simultaneous increase in high-altitude rubberneckers yearning to mingle with Everest's glamorous new media darlings.

JEFF RHOADS, American climber and cinematographer who in 1998 became the first non-Sherpa to summit twice in one season: You get a lot of random people just walking through camp, and the climbers get a little bummed. Climbers don't want to have anything to do with the trekkers; they're afraid they're going to get sick. A couple years ago, two guys came walking into Base Camp carrying bikes. Their plan was to bike to Everest. So these dudes were like, "God, we don't have any food, could you give us a cup of tea?" And you know what? We were doing our own thing right then. We said, like, "No, we can't. See you guys later."

NEAL BEIDLEMAN: I've seen some really bizarre trekkers who don't have a friggin' clue. You know the type: The world travelers, the hippies of past years reincarnated. They come cruising in, and they don't have much gear, and they're all happy, and they've got drums or tambourines or whatever, and poof, they get themselves to Base Camp and get ill. They go, "Oh, my God, it's really fucking cold up here," and you've got to help them out.

GÖRAN KROPP: There was a man who was trying to put his son's umbilical cord up on the summit of Everest. I think that was quite amazing. He had been there four times before to try to carry that silly cord up there. And then there was a Russian guy in leopard-skin tights flying a parapente over the Base Camp with his wife hanging below him on a rope, lower down, sometimes hitting the rocks. That was also crazy.

PETER HILLARY, son of Edmund and veteran Himalayan climber: We established the Royal Khumbu Angling Association and Men's Fellowship—a pseudo fishing club at 17,500 feet. It was a lot of fun. We had fixed lines going out to frozen pools on the glacier. I remember trekkers coming up and they'd say, "What on earth are these ropes for?" And I'd just say, "Fishing lines. Ah, you should have been here this morning. The fish were biting. They were absolutely delicious. We had them for breakfast." I'm pretty sure the poor trekkers thought we must be suffering from cerebral edema. We told them there was a specific species that lived on the glacier—the chisel-headed salmon. The chisel-shaped head allowed them to swim through the ice. Ah, yes, the Royal Khumbu Angling Association. Royal in the Nepalese sense, of course. We even had certificates.

NEAL BEIDLEMAN: Even though this is at 17,500 feet and it's in the middle of Nepal, Everest Base Camp is a thriving economic place now. You can get whatever you want, in exchange for money. People know the value of a dollar. You can buy Cokes and beers. You can buy equipment. Crampons. You could pretty much outfit yourself right there.

ED VIESTURS: Boy, the noises are unforgettable. You hear everything: coughing, hawking up a loogey, vomiting. And you've got noisy generators going all day. People yelling into the radios to talk to somebody up on the mountain. They figure if they yell, it will transmit better. Yak bells coming and going as other teams arrive. Satellite phones ringing. And in the morning, at about two or three, you'll hear another team tromping past your tent, heading up into the Icefall. You hear this whole entourage—you know, the crampons crunching through the ice and gravel—filing by your tent while you're snuggling in your bed thinking, "Ah, I'm kinda glad that's not me today." But, man, you're also thinking, "I hope whoever is out there is going to have a good day—and that they make it back down to Base Camp."

* In 1993 the new record for people on top hit 129. Now the whole world really was watching. But as the successes skyrocketed, so did the tension—and the death. The loss of 15 climbers in the spring of 1996 brought the Everest overcrowding debate to fever pitch and led to a lot of soul-searching among Base Camp veterans. But it hasn't stopped them from coming back.

NGIMA KALE SHERPA, cook who worked several years for the late expedition leader Scott Fischer: When we arrive at Base Camp, before the climbing begins, we have to make a puja ceremony to please the gods. People think that Mount Everest is a big rock, but it's not just a rock. We believe that Mount Everest is a god. If you're lot of shitty job doing there, lot of things happen, you know? If a girl and boy stay together in tent, then something bad will happen. Sometimes people will break their legs. Sometimes Sherpas get killed. So what do? We make a little, short tent, which has a flat rock for burning juniper. We bring out all our expedition gear, like crampons and ice axes, and then we bring a couple bottles of chang, and then beer, and then we put all this stuff together with the Sherpa stuff, with the rice and juniper. And then we each other making little celebrating for blessing from the gods, make sure we can have permission to go on the mountain.

NEAL BEIDLEMAN: As people start to go higher, tension in the camps goes from lighthearted to dead serious. People down in Base Camp start wandering around to the other camps that have radios, they start tuning in, and the rumors are flying. And then when people start coming off the mountain, either there's just complete euphoria and joy and happiness shared by the team, or there's complete meltdowns. It really brings out some very, very deep emotions.

AL BURGESS: I don't know why anybody wants to particularly hike there. It's still a physical wasteland. It's ironic, because if you look at Hindu and Buddhist pilgrimage sites, usually they're places where water, air, fire, earth all come together. There's some significance. But the Western shrine is Everest Base Camp. The pilgrimage is like rusted tin cans and strung-out egos.

DAVID BREASHEARS, American climber and filmmaker whose work includes the IMAX film: One night in 1996, several weeks before the tragedy, I went outside my tent around 4 a.m. I just stood there, with the prayer flags flapping in the gentle breeze. There was a pretty good moon, and I could see ice glistening thousands of feet above on the West Shoulder. I could hear the pops, the creaks, the rumbling of the ice underfoot and all around. It reminded me that the place was alive, that it was dangerous, unpredictable. Above the silhouette of the surrounding peaks was the comet Hayakutake. I asked myself, When will this comet come around again, and when did it last come around? I could feel the timelessness of this patch of rock that's Base Camp, the ephemeral nature of our existence. Yes, we're driven by all sorts of different things. We're goal-oriented, we're trophy hunters, we're Walter Mitty types. But when you're on Everest, the basic rhythms of night take over: You eat and you rest. All is quiet. In the morning the sun will come, and all of this ambition and all of this drive and all of the different forces that work on the mountain these days will come to life.   

Brad Wetzler wrote about the Czech tramping craze in November 2000.