Here’s What It Takes to Fly a Drone on Mount Everest

His hack worked, and Bartek launched the drone again. Minutes later, he found Allen’s position on the steep slope and took a series of photos from about 100 feet away. The images showed Allen lying on his chest, hanging from his ice axe by both arms. A short distance below him, a gaping crevasse cut across the slope at the lip of a horrific 6,000-foot wall of sheer ice cliffs.

But that was before I found myself inexplicably drawn into an expedition that hoped to solve one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries. It had been almost 100 years since George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were last seen at 28,200 feet on June 8, 1924, still “going strong” for the summit.

Renan wasn’t sure initially which drone would perform best on Mount Everest. The Mavic Pro 2, the latest iteration of the drone used by the Poles on K2, was an obvious choice. But Renan was more interested in a flying machine called the Inspire, which he described as the Mavic Pro’s big brother and one of the world’s most advanced drones. It weighs eight pounds and has carbon fiber arms that rise up like an eagle lifting its wings.

Duly advised, we proceeded up a gravel road in our SUV, which was chock-full of photographic equipment. We drove past barbed-wire pens filled with industrial detritus and pulled into a small lot outside a one-story metal office building. Our visit had been arranged by Renan’s wife, Taylor Rees, who is a filmmaker and climber who specializes in environmental storytelling.

Randy Shaw, department manager and senior test lead, would be our handler for the day. As we introduced ourselves, a tractor trailer pulled into the parking lot.“Just a cruise missile.”Scattered across the 160-acre campus of barren desert were various pressure chambers, centrifuges, drop towers, and shakers. Shaw pointed to a building large enough to park three Greyhound buses inside, and told us he could lower the temperature down to –200 degrees Fahrenheit.

The entire front of the chamber was a massive door with a circular glass opening in its center that looked like a porthole on a ship. The inside was polished steel, much of which looked as if it had been recently run over with a grinder. Two round steel plates the size of manhole covers were bolted to the outside of the right wall. Numbers were handwritten next to each bolt—torque settings, I’d later learn.“No one here has any idea,” said Shaw. “We can only guess.

They could probably use SpaceXStarlink from up there, right?

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