THE FLYING ELBOWS have started plenty of feuds, leading to threats ranging from lawsuits to physical violence. Longtime Everest figure Henry Todd is high on the Sjogrens' enemies list, in part because of his past. He spent seven and a half years in prison in the seventies for the marketing and distribution of LSD and was banned from Nepal for two years after a base-camp altercation in May 2000 with Finn-Olaf Jones, a Discovery.com producer. Jones claimed he was punched. Todd denied it, but he was convicted by a Nepalese court and got the boot. These days, he's an Everest outfitter again and was scheduled to be working on the mountain in 2007.

The Sjogrens' first anti-Todd salvo appeared in 2003 under the headline "Everest's Most Dangerous Person, Henry Todd," and it accused Todd of supplying faulty tanks to a number of expeditions over the years. The second, which ran in 2005, was a six-parter called "Oxygen on Everest—the Highest Death Lab in the World," which reiterated many of their earlier charges. Both blasts included quotes from unnamed climbers who allegedly had problems with oxygen supplied by Todd, none of them leading to fatalities.

Did the Sjogrens make a solid case? It's hard to say. Their reportorial style often skips the norms of American journalism: Personal invective is seen as fair play, and source attributions can be maddeningly vague. When I read ExplorersWeb, I'm sometimes left with the feeling that a story could very well be true or false, or somewhere in between. But, during my own research, I didn't come across any substantive fact-based rebuttals to their stories, and so far no one has sued them for libel.

Asked about ExplorersWeb, Todd, speaking from Edinburgh, Scotland, said, "I personally don't look at it, but my wife has looked at it, and my lawyers have looked at it." He wouldn't comment on any specific accusations. "We don't respond because we regard these people as totally absurd." He did, however, offer 20 minutes of insults, calling his foes "a pair of complete idiots, utterly ludicrous, an absurd pair."

I asked Todd if he or his lawyer had ever taken legal action of any kind. "We couldn't be bothered," he said.

Another favorite target is expedition leader Russell Brice, one of the most prominent guides on Everest. In 2006, a Brice team passed dying climber David Sharp on the way down from a summit bid, because he appeared to be beyond rescue. The Sjogrens' fury over this incident has been directed largely at Brice, who they believe should have tried to save Sharp. Their Brice piece, headlined "The Most Shameful Act in the History of Mountaineering," ran to coincide with the Discovery Channel's fall 2006 broadcast of Everest: Beyond the Limit, a reality series that followed the progress of Brice's expedition.

Brice has defenders—writing in Outside last year, Ed Douglas argued that it's unfair to lay so much blame on him. In an e-mail, Brice expressed disdain for the Sjogrens. "ExplorersWeb were very hard on me and quite inaccurate," he wrote. "However, I have never had anything to do with them in the past and I have no intention of having anything to do with them in the future, including making comments about their comments."

Most explorers are charged with lesser crimes, usually against the record book. The Sjogrens have quibbled with exploration records claimed by David de Rothschild, Maud Fontenoy, and others. Fudging, in the Sjogrens' view, is rampant in the adventure world, which they see as dominated by media hounds claiming specious firsts of all kinds. In their eyes, the mainstream media seem all too ready to lap up claims without scrutiny.

Many explorers, naturally, protest. "I'm not a fan," says Ben Saunders, an Englishman who skied to the North Pole in 2004. Instead of starting from the Russian landmass and kayaking to the ice, he flew to the edge of the icepack, drawing jeers from the Sjogrens.

"By tradition, everybody has started at land," Tom says.

"Dominick Arduin chose to start from land," Saunders replies. "And she died."

Despite such differences, Saunders says he can't help but admit that ExplorersWeb is a great way to keep up. The site often irritates him, but he still checks it out once a week.