Visit Mount Everest and the surrounding peaks and valleys virtually with this interactive, 5.5 gigabyte panorama by Jake Norton.

Lessons from Everest - and life - about hope, fear, challenges, and how to manage it all as we approach the new year.

Never let success hide its emptiness from you, achievement its nothingness, toil its desolation. And so keep alive the incentive to push on further, that pain in the soul which drives us beyond ourselves. - Dag Hammarskjöld

Of all sides of Everest - the south from Nepal, the north from Tibet, and the east, also from Tibet - it is the eastern approach via the Kama and Kangshung Valleys, which are the most stunning.