The CTSS season is building, and the excitement across the board is growing. In the Khumbu, our Rugged Luxury Everest Base Camp trekking team is moving deeper into the valley. In Kathmandu, guides and climbers are beginning to arrive ahead of the Everest expedition.

After passing through the gates of Sagarmatha National Park, our first trekking team of the season made their way from Phakding (8,563 ft / 2,610 m) to Namche Bazaar (11,286 ft / 3,440 m), catching their first views of Everest along the way. The route crossed the Dudh Koshi River multiple times, including the Hillary Suspension Bridge, above glacial turquoise water with pine forest falling steeply to the gorge below. Mani stones carved with Tibetan scripture line the trail, as they have for centuries. The team arrived in Namche in good spirits, with a rest and acclimatization day ahead tomorrow.

Photos courtesy of Tomi Ceppi

Meanwhile, guide staff is arriving in Kathmandu as several teams prepare to get underway. Between all of our team and private climbs and treks, we will have 26 unique “families” on the mountain this year. We look at this as one of our biggest strengths on the mountain. We detail this in our recent blog: What Makes CTSS Different on Mount Everest: Our Seven Secret Sauces, and below is a short excerpt that highlights this Secret Sauce:

Our smaller families plug into a much larger infrastructure behind the scenes. The scale of the extended family allows us to pool resources and invest more heavily in staff, amenities, advanced forecasting, deep oxygen reserves, and redundancy than most small teams operating on their own.

The depth of that resource pool creates genuine redundancy. CTSS fields approximately 50 to 60 Sherpas each season and maintains additional oxygen at multiple camps, including the South Col. Our teams have the personnel and equipment to respond to problems in real time and assist climbers without relying on other expeditions.

On Everest, many smaller operators that lack resources must rely on neighboring operators when issues arise, whereas CTSS is designed to be largely self-sufficient. That independence provides an important safety margin and allows our teams to keep moving even when conditions change.

We had a chance to connect with guide Mike Bennett, who will be leading our Western Guided Team Climb alongside Porter Crockard, who is already on the ground, ready to kick things off. In addition, big news came in from our leadership as Expedition Leader Mike Hamill is en route to Kathmandu with a massive amount of gear for all of our climbers and trekkers.

More updates to follow as the trekking team acclimatizes in Namche and the Everest team assembles in Kathmandu.

Photos courtesy of Mike Bennett and Caroline Pemberton