Never mind the altitude sickness, the bitter temperatures, and the notoriously cranky climbers—Everest Base Camp is always worth the trek.

By Finn-Olaf Jones

"Thanks to all the trekkers who came to visit us at Base Camp. Let me tell you, you were the sanest people there."

—Gavin Bate, after leading this year's first successful expedition up the Nepalese side of Mount Everest.

Scott Darsney

Welcome to Everest Base Camp. But where is the Big Mountain itself? Up here, Everest is obscured by surrounding peaks and the Khumbu Icefall, which towers some 2,000 feet above the tents. You've already gotten the best views of Everest down valley, where it loomed like an inverted guillotine blade above its already disconcertingly tall mountain siblings. But you didn't come for the view; you're here to experience firsthand Everest's highly charged climbing scene.

Before going into the camps to rub elbows with the climbers, consider this: For weeks they've been up here at 17,600 feet, fueling their brains with about half the oxygen available at sea level. They miss their spouses/kids/cellmates. They've put a desperate amount of cash on the line to be here. They wake up every morning knowing that their endeavor has one of the world's highest mortality rates. Under these conditions, Everest climbers can be about as relaxed and sociable as a cheeseburger-deprived Marlon Brando.

Witness this scene I observed last April when waiting in Base Camp to climb Mount Everest: A cute dog accompanying a trekking party trots up to a group of climbers gathered in front of their mess tent. One of the climbers yells, "Get that thing outta here!" and hurls a rock, which sends the poor critter scampering off as the other climbers guffaw like pirates. Foolish is the trekker who would approach this camp. (By the way, the dog got its karmic revenge—none of these climbers summited).

There is some twisted logic to this odd behavior. White blood cells are smarter than climbers and don't stick around during the long wait for a summit window in the thin air of Base Camp; immune systems break down up here and, as a result, some climbers feel they have to be hard-nosed to avoid germs brought up by outsiders. If they catch even a mild cold, the only remedy is to descend to the teahouses in the relatively oxygen-rich valley below for a day or two.

The antipathy goes beyond germs. Despite their shared love of high places, many climbers don't see trekkers as birds of their feather. Maybe it's their obvious sense of awe that sets trekkers apart, while climbers become jaded by their prolonged exposure to mountains. Perhaps it's that trekkers openly carry around the Everest disaster books that most climbers pretend to loathe (they prefer to think of the lowlands as dangerous—two of the most passed-around books at Base Camp this year, Endurance and The Perfect Storm, deal with catastrophes at sea). Or perhaps it's just that trekkers are somehow a little cleaner, a little fatter, and a little less hypoxic than their climbing brethren. Whatever it is, trekkers stick out at Base Camp. And as with hayseeds recently arrived in New York City, that's not always a good thing.

Not to say that trekkers are always unwelcome. In fact, a lot of the climbing groups can be quite generous about sharing a meal and even a spot to sleep for the night. The best way to solicit an invitation? Offer climbers the two things most missed in the isolation of altitude: news and sex. In terms of the former, recent newspapers, magazines, or—best of all—messages from associates farther down the valley (there's always someone going to or from a climbing camp) are manna to the folks on Everest. In terms of the latter, remember this: No one has bathed for weeks. Hey, maybe just a backrub...

But don't worry about pandering to the climbers; they don't call all the shots up at Base Camp anyway—the Sherpas do. One would expect that after three generations of watching tourists trekking through their backyards, Sherpas would be competing with Parisians to see who can make visitors feel most unwelcome. But no, by some Buddhist miracle, their hospitality and grace remain as rock-solid as their surroundings. For example, last May, an expedition leader took exception to a webcast I had done from Base Camp and marched 21 of his expedition members over to my tent to strong-arm me. I wasn't in at the time, but when I returned, I found that an ad hoc platoon of Sherpas had appointed themselves my bodyguards. For the rest of my stay, at least one of them remained close by with a ski pole or an ice ax at hand. When I left, my monetary tokens of gratitude were politely but firmly waved away. Instead, I was presented with a necklace featuring Buddhist inscriptions to protect me against evil spirits.

It's obvious what visitors see in the Sherpas. But what do the Sherpas see in us? Well, for one thing, their gentle culture encourages kindness to visitors, no matter how trying. For another thing, they love our stuff. This is evident in the extraordinary changes in the Sherpa's main market village, Namche Bazaar, whose buildings cling to the sides of a steep, narrow valley like coffee grounds to the inside of a cup. When I first trekked through there five years ago, the hippest Sherpas in town were gathered at the side of the narrow, yak-clogged street, grooving to the soundtrack of the immortal Linda Blair movie Roller Boogie as it blared from a portable cassette player. Now, the youth of Namche sport reversed baseball caps, rock to Bob Marley on their Walkmans, and play a wicked game of pool in the town's two lively pool halls (the tables were flown in by helicopter).

There are even several places in town to surf the Net. "Ever check out the dirty sites?" I half-jokingly asked a young Sherpa who was bent over a terminal in one of the teahouses. "I don't have a credit card," he responded rather morosely, not looking up.

Is this a worrisome thing? Is Everest being converted into yet another banal, Westernized tourist destination? Possibly. Last year, enough garish corporate sponsorship logos were attached to Base Camp's tents and Buddhist altars to make a stroll through the moraine an experience akin to walking the Las Vegas Strip. One expedition purporting to be cleaning up the mountain required so many yakloads of Coca-Cola that many of us wondered if it could even clean up after itself. And yes, on more nights than I care to remember I was lulled to sleep by the strains of "The Macarena" emanating from an enthusiastic gathering of Sherpas who were dancing away the chill nearby.

But even if the yaks were to start wearing Walkmans, Base Camp will always hold a unique fascination for trekkers. Where else can you play soccer with superstar climbers every afternoon on the frozen moraine? Where else would you be willing to brave the likes of Base Camp latrines and the Khumbu's other natural disasters? And where else can you get a front-row Therm-a-Rest view of the exquisite tortures endured by those for whom Everest Base Camp is not the destination, but merely the starting point?