HimTreks

HimTreks was the Kathmandu logistics company of P. B. Thapa, who worked with Scott Fischer and Anatoli Boukreev on preparations for the Mountain Madness expedition to Everest in 1996. Its role connected the expedition’s commercial and climbing plans to the practical work of arranging supplies and transport in Nepal.

Role in the Expedition

When Fischer met Boukreev in Kathmandu, he was discussing an Everest permit, the expedition’s clients, and the substantial cost of obtaining permission to climb. Fischer had clients signed up, but the permit was not yet in hand. In this preparatory phase, HimTreks was identified as the company that would organize Mountain Madness’s logistics in Nepal, with P. B. Thapa acting as its representative.

Thapa joined Fischer and Boukreev as they discussed the expedition’s arrangements. Their planning included equipment as well as the climb itself: Boukreev was to negotiate with the Russian supplier Poisk over lightweight oxygen cylinders, and Fischer also asked him to arrange a high-altitude tent made to specifications. The evidence places HimTreks within this network of coordination, but does not attribute the oxygen or tent procurement directly to the company.

Supply and Transport Arrangements

As the team prepared to leave Kathmandu, Thapa was assigned responsibility for packing supplies and getting them to the airport on March 25. Boukreev and Ngima were scheduled to fly with the provisions to Syangboche, where porters and yak teams would carry them onward to Everest Base Camp. Boukreev separately needed to buy additional polypropylene climbing rope. These tasks show the expedition’s dependence on a chain of people and transport stages between the city and the mountain.

The preparations were made under pressure. Fischer arrived in Kathmandu with clients due in four days, while the oxygen order and a high-altitude tent were still in Russia. At dinner, Fischer, Boukreev, Thapa, and the Sherpas Ngima Kale and Lopsang Jangbu discussed the outstanding problems and divided responsibility for getting provisions to Base Camp. The account establishes Thapa’s part in packing and dispatching supplies, not the eventual success or failure of every item’s delivery.

Place in the Commercial Expedition System

HimTreks’s role illustrates how a commercial Everest expedition depended on local logistical organization alongside guides, clients, and climbing Sherpas. At the broader level, the book describes a growing workforce carrying loads, establishing camps, cooking, and serving climbers for wages ranging from $2.50 to $50 a day. Its account also criticizes the unequal economics of route preparation: expedition organizers could collect substantial payments for access to fixed routes while relying on Sherpas’ labor, often for comparatively little compensation.

The narrative does not identify HimTreks as an organizer of route fixing or assign it responsibility for the expedition’s later safety and communication problems. Its documented contribution is more specific: through Thapa, it helped coordinate Mountain Madness’s Nepal-side logistics and the movement of expedition supplies toward the mountain.