Mountaineer Snapchats view from the top of the world as he summited Everest
This is what it looks like from the top of the world:
Experienced mountain climber Cory Richards reached the top of Mount Everest on Tuesday local time (Monday ET).
Richards scaled Earth's tallest mountain without the use of supplemental oxygen and shared the entire experience with fans on Snapchat through the handle EverestNoFilter.
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Richards set out to climb Everest with Adrian Ballinger, another experienced mountaineer who has summited Everest six times previously.
Ballinger didn't make it to the top this time, however.
According to snaps sent by a team member of Ballinger and Richards' who was lower down on Everest, Ballinger got too cold to continue on to the top of the mountain, opting to turn around and rest at a camp a bit more than 27,000 feet above sea level.
Ballinger doesn't seem too upset about his failed summit attempt.
"So proud," he said of Richards' climb in a snap posted Tuesday.
After Richards made it to the top, he joined Ballinger at the camp and then they both continued down the mountain out of the area known as the "Death Zone" -- the part of the mountain above 8,000 meters where the air is too thin to acclimatize to.
Many Everest climbers use supplemental oxygen to help stave off the extreme effects of high altitude on the human body.
At Everest's summit -- which shoots 29,029 feet above sea level -- there is only one-third as much oxygen in the thin air as there is at sea level.
Supplemental oxygen is used to hopefully prevent the most severe symptoms brought on by altitude sickness.
Extremely high altitudes put people at a greater risk for frostbite, disorientation, loss of appetite and a multitude of other symptoms.
While being "too cold" to continue climbing Everest may at first seem like a strange excuse to turn around, it isn't. During an climb like Everest, becoming too cold is extremely dangerous, and Ballinger's (AB) decision to turn around is being hailed on social media as a good choice.
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Ballinger and Richards are now in relative safety at a camp at about 21,000 feet, according to a recent snap sent from their handle.
Snaps from Richards and Ballinger are slowly trickling in showing their ascent.
Richards' most recent snaps provide some incredible views of the vistas seen from the high slopes of Everest, and he even snapped some views of another climber on the mountain.
Richards was alone for much of his summit push after Ballinger headed back down after reaching about 27,821 feet.
Ballinger and Richards have been sharing their life on Everest since they reached basecamp in April.
The two adventurers explained the difficulties of life on the mountain, telling fans that it's difficult to eat, drink and sometimes move in the high-altitude environment.
Sometimes their snaps were pretty ordinary, showing the two climbers jamming out to music or just drinking coffee.
Richards and Ballinger used their months on Everest to get acclimatized to the high altitude, making treks up and down the mountain, building up their tolerance to the thin air.
Richards' summit success comes after a deadly string of days on Everest.
According to the Associated Press, an Australian woman died on Saturday near Everest's peak, a Dutch man died on Friday while descending the mountain and an Indian man died on Sunday while being taken down the mountain. CNN also reports that another man died on Thursday while helping to set lines for climbers.
This time of year, Everest can become crowded by people attempting to use brief windows of good weather to ascend the mountain, potentially creating bottlenecks that delay people on the way up to the summit or back down from it.
The crowding can force people to stay in the Death Zone for longer than is advisable.
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Topics Snapchat
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
