Ten years after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay blazed the trail in March 1953, a mere 13 additional people had summitted Mount Everest. By 1973, the total stood at 36. At the end of 1993, it had climbed to 522. In more recent years, the numbers have exploded: as of December 2024, more than 7,000 people have made in excess of 12,000 successful ascents.

Climbing Everest remains an exceptionally dangerous endeavor: more than 300 people are known to have died on the mountain, with the bodies of approximately 200 still there because they were too difficult to retrieve. Nonetheless, attacking the world’s highest mountain today is in many ways a different experience than that of Hillary and Norgay—let alone the likes of George Mallory, who died on the slopes of Everest in 1924 (and may have reached the summit).

With sufficient experience and training, and a few tens of thousands of dollars burning a hole in your pocket, it is possible to be guided to the peak; Sherpas haul equipment, including oxygen canisters, up the mountain for you; and fixed ropes serve as lifelines, ladders and route markers. Even drones are now deployed to deliver and remove supplies.

Eric Larsen, who has summited Everest and walked to the North and South Poles, argues that the biggest difference between Hillary and Norgay’s time and today is the availability of information and accumulation of knowledge over the decades.

“Even just knowing that it's been accomplished before, my level of concern, of uncertainty, was so much lower,” he explains. “We have so much more pinpoint information about weather, or how our bodies react to altitude. We know the routes; they didn’t even know that.”

In certain other respects, however, Larsen argues that much remains the same.

“An ice axe is still an ice axe,” he explains. “It’s not that much different. Boots are not that much different. I still wear wool socks. They wore down jackets, like I do.”

If there is a trend in mountaineering equipment since 1953, says Ryan Waters, who owns a guiding company called Mountain Professionals and has summited Everest seven times, it is toward significant improvements in such things as warmth, waterproofing and, above all, weight.

“Technology has been great because it’s made warmer, lighter material that does the job much better,” he explained over a video call from Base Camp—itself a clear sign of how much things have changed on the mountain. “Think about meals. They carried tins of food [including tinned sardines, dried apricots and Kendal mint cakes] whereas now we can take freeze dried meals that are very light.”

Below is a rundown of some of the equipment and clothing Hillary and Norgay used, compared to what climbers use today.

The boots for the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition were specially made by the British Boot, Shoe and Allied Trade Research Association (SATRA). A disposable rubberized layer was designed to be worn on the lowest reaches of the climb where the snow and ground was still wet, after which it could be cut away.

The boots were measured to fit for each of the expedition's 35 members and were made from leather and lined with six layers of kapok—a natural fiber with natural water-repelling properties. Kapok also acted as insulation, its texture allowing plenty of air pockets to remain inside the footwear for warmth. At a little over 4 pounds, they were half the weight of the kind of climbing boots more commonly found at the time.

Today, says Waters, climbers on Everest wear specialized boots known as 8,000-meter boots, which are similar in concept: an inner boot provides much of the warmth, with an outer boot made from a combination of leather and synthetic materials.

“They look really heavy, but when you pick them up, they’re very light,” he explains.

Hillary wore multiple layers, many of which were made from or lined with wool, including a sweater that was made solely from the neck area of Shetland sheep, spun into the finest of yarns. He also wore a down jacket manufactured by a French company called Alpcan, which manufactured duvets and sleeping bags and applied the technology and theory behind those products and applied them to clothing.

At lower elevations—below Camp 3, which is at about 27,000 feet— Waters wears a wool or synthetic base layer and then layers up with a mid-layer including something like a fleece, topped with a down jacket. For extreme cold, he’ll add a full-body down suit.

Hillary used a Chamonix Mont Blanc ice axe, with a straight pick and a handle made from European ash, which was lighter than the hickory handles commonly used at the time. The shaft measured approximately 32 inches in length—shorter than the almost 50-inch handles that were in use at the beginning of the 20th century—but far longer than ice axes of today.

Over time, as climbing techniques have become more refined, ice axes have become smaller, with curved picks and shafts generally no longer than 27 inches and as short as 20 inches, and are made from lightweight, composite materials.

Hillary, Norgay and other expedition members sheltered in tents that featured a canvas shell with an inner nylon tent; they slept in nylon-shell, down-filled sleeping bags that weighed approximately nine pounds.

Whereas modern Base Camp tents may be spacious and comfortable, those for high camps and the assault on the summit are small, lightweight and double-walled for protection against fierce winds and extreme elements. Modern sleeping bags weigh just 4.5 pounds and are rated for temperatures as low as -40 Fahrenheit.

In short, both Larsen and Waters agree that, while technological innovations have helped, the fundamentals of climbing the planet’s highest peak remain much the same as in 1953. Which, they say, makes the achievement of Hillary and Norgay, who didn’t have 70 years of precedent to draw on, all the more remarkable.

“Respect is the word that comes to mind,” says Waters of his predecessors. “We're still undertaking great adventures, but we're doing them thanks to a lot of great foresight from people who did them before us.”