okay, for a while there I special interested on Mount Everest so I want to explain this photo apropos of absolutely no one asking
yes, this is real; yes, it's dangerous and environmentally destructive and generally embarrassing that a bunch of orthodontists and car dealers pay $100,000 to have Sherpas carry their crap up the mountain while they stare at each other's backsides
no, it does not look like this all the way down the mountain, nor does it look like this every day
The situation on Everest is that it's so tall that the top is literally in the jet stream, so on 99% of days, the wind up there is unfathomably powerful and would blast you into Tibet. A tremendous amount of money and technology is invested in custom weather forecasts for the summit of Everest, so on those rare occasions when the jet stream shifts and ascent is possible, every climbing team knows it and they all rush the summit at once.
So what you're looking at here is a large fraction of everyone who climbed Everest that year. If you showed up on a random day, it would be empty and also you would die.
The simultaneous summit rush is extremely dangerous, but I think a lot of people get the misleading idea that Everest has lines all summer like a theme park, when the real situation is a little more complicated than that.
(The situation for the Sherpas is also complicated; they get paid a small percentage of what the climbers pay and they're the most likely to be injured or killed, but Everest climbing brings in vastly more money to the region than anything else. In addition to the mountain guides and porters, there's a whole economy of boarding houses and restaurants and shops catering to Everest climbers and trekkers, and the Everest guiding agencies have also donated improvements like a modern medical clinic. And this is an extremely remote area where there's not a whole lot of other economic opportunities. Would there be the same money coming in if they only allowed treks to the base of the mountain, but not the added danger of summit climbs? Probably not, but it's hard to say exactly where the "worth it" line is. Especially for me, who has literally never even been on the same continent as the communities dealing with this.)