The Khumbu Icefall, the shifting glacier maze between Everest Base Camp and Camp 1, has claimed nearly 50 lives since 1953 and traditionally required Sherpas to spend six to eight hours carrying gear through it by hand. Cargo drones have begun rewriting that equation, cutting a journey that used to take most of a day down to about eight minutes. Here’s how the technology is actually being used on the mountain, and what’s still standing in its way.
From Six Hours to Eight Minutes
The scale of the shift shows up clearly in the numbers from the 2026 spring climbing season. On Everest’s south side in Nepal, the DJI FlyCart 100 cargo drone, operated in partnership with local company Airlift Technology, moved more than 22,000 pounds of cargo between Base Camp and Camp 1 — roughly 15,900 pounds of climbing supplies going up, including oxygen cylinders, ropes, and ladders, and around 6,300 pounds of waste coming back down. A trip that requires Sherpas to trek six to eight hours through the Khumbu Icefall now takes a single drone about eight minutes.
The drone itself was tested carrying payloads up to 47 kilograms per flight at altitudes above 6,300 meters, in temperatures ranging from 5 to 41 degrees Fahrenheit — conditions that push both the aircraft and its operators to their limits.
How the Deliveries Actually Work
Getting cargo through the icefall isn’t as simple as pointing a drone at a target and letting it fly. The process is a close collaboration between Sherpas on the ground and pilots managing the aircraft. A small scouting drone typically maps the safest route first, and Sherpas climbing the icefall radio back GPS coordinates for exactly where specific gear is needed. Flying between Base Camp and Camp 1 usually takes two pilots working in tandem — one controls the aircraft from Base Camp up to the top of the icefall, then hands off control to a second pilot stationed at Camp 1 who guides it the rest of the way. Because the drone often can’t land safely in the terrain, supplies are frequently delivered using a self-detaching winch system instead.
Taking Pressure Off the Icefall Doctors
Before drones entered the picture, this work fell almost entirely to a specialized group of Sherpas known as the Icefall Doctors, mobilized by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee to manually carry ladders, ropes, and hundreds of kilograms of equipment through the most dangerous section of the mountain. In one recent season, drones handled roughly 444 kilograms of that route-preparation equipment on their own, work that traditionally required at least 14 porters over six hours. Rather than being seen as a threat to Sherpa livelihoods, many in the climbing community have described the technology as a genuine safety tool — reducing the number of dangerous icefall crossings any individual porter has to make over the course of a season.
Waste Removal Is Part of the Story Too
The benefits haven’t been limited to moving supplies uphill. Return flights have been used to haul garbage and human waste back down from the upper mountain, supporting Nepal’s broader efforts to clean up decades of accumulated trash on Everest. In the 2026 season alone, drones removed nearly 2.9 metric tons of waste from the mountain on return trips, work that would otherwise require porters to carry heavy loads back down through the same hazardous terrain they’d just climbed.
The Technology Hasn’t Been Without Setbacks
Drone logistics on Everest haven’t scaled up without friction. In 2025, one of Airlift’s drones was caught by an unexpected gust of wind, triggering an emergency parachute deployment that led to a hard landing and a broken rotor in the icefall. More disruptively, Nepali authorities unexpectedly revoked the license allowing cargo drone flights partway through the 2026 season, stalling operations at a moment when Sherpas and expedition operators were depending on drones for oxygen and gear deliveries. The cancellation left operators, climbers, and even some politicians uncertain about the reasoning, underscoring that the regulatory framework around this technology is still catching up to how quickly it’s being adopted on the ground.
Beyond Logistics: A Wider Push Into High-Altitude Drone Tech
Everest has also become something of a proving ground for extreme-altitude drone technology more broadly. On the mountain’s north side in China, DJI tested its first eVTOL delivery drone, the EV50, flying it to nearly 29,000 feet to carry ozone-measuring equipment for university researchers studying the upper troposphere — the first time a university team has used drones for observation at that altitude. Separate mapping drones have also been used to scan the Khumbu Icefall at high resolution, providing climbers with more current safety data about a glacier that’s constantly shifting.
Join The Discussion
Have you followed the growing use of drones on Everest, or are you curious about how this kind of technology might reshape mountaineering logistics elsewhere? Share your thoughts on the safety benefits versus the risks of relying on drone operations in such an extreme environment, or if you’ve climbed in the Khumbu region yourself, how the changes on the ground have looked from your perspective. Questions about how the technology works, the regulatory hurdles it still faces, or what’s likely to come next are welcome too.
