High Altitude

In December 2013, I traveled to Nepal's Mt. Everest on assignment for the BBC. It was the 60th anniversary of the first summit by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. In that time there's been hundreds of thousands of tourists who have turned the mountain from a picturesque natural wonder to the world's most challenging, and highest, ecological crisis. Trash is a problem, and I was traveling to document the human footprint in the Everest region.

I spent two weeks in the Himalayas on the way up to Everest Base Camp at more than 18,000 feet, and a month in-country. Along the way I dealt with extreme weather, physical pain, and significantly low oxygen levels. People I trekked with were medically evacuated. Those that made it pushed their bodies and minds to the limits and experienced a special camaraderie and sense of accomplishment.

My story was selected as part of the Twitter Fiction Festival, which is co-sponsored by Penguin Random House, the Association of American Publishers, and USA Today. "High Altitude" will told be in tweets during the festival from March 12-16. You can follow me at twitter.com/adampopescu and find more info here: http://twitterfictionfestival.com/schedule/relive-climb-mt-everest/?timezone_string=America/New_York

Join me on the journey.