This story appears in the April 2021 issue of National Geographic magazine.
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A veteran climber reconsiders his view of the ‘Everest selfie’
Wasn’t summiting Everest a train wreck of amateurs and egos? The writer thought so until he went there—and was surprised at what he found.
Writer and climber Mark Synnott calls this his “Everest selfie,” although the person holding the camera was Matt Irving, the climber ahead of him. They were among the seven members of the spring 2019 expedition that took the north route up Everest, searching for signs of a climber lost there almost a century before.
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