What Base Camp actually is
Everest Base Camp is a seasonal site on the Khumbu Glacier at 5,364 m, at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall, used each spring as a staging camp by climbing expeditions preparing their ascent of Everest's South Col route. No permanent structures exist here; the site is rebuilt on shifting glacier ice every climbing season.
What's actually there
During spring climbing season, dozens of expedition tents, kitchen shelters, and communications equipment spread across the rocky glacier surface, connected by makeshift paths marked with prayer flags. Outside the March to May climbing window, the site is largely empty ice and rock, visited only by trekkers on a day trip from Gorak Shep.
Trekkers versus climbers here
Trekkers on a standard EBC itinerary visit as a day trip from Gorak Shep (5,164 m) and do not overnight at Base Camp itself; climbing expeditions, by contrast, occupy the site for weeks at a time each spring, using it as their final staging point before pushing through the Khumbu Icefall toward the Western Cwm and South Col.
The marker and the memorial cairn
A prominent rock cairn, decorated with prayer flags and often marked with expedition banners during climbing season, serves as the informal photo point most trekkers associate with reaching Base Camp, though its exact position shifts slightly year to year as the glacier beneath it moves.
No summit view from here
Base Camp itself has no view of Everest's summit, since Nuptse's west ridge blocks the sightline directly ahead; trekkers who want to see the summit pyramid make the separate pre-dawn climb to Kala Patthar (5,644 m) the following morning, typically scheduled within 24 to 48 hours of the Base Camp visit.
Origins: a 1953 expedition camp
Base Camp's use as an Everest staging site dates to the 1953 British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt, which pitched its South Col approach camp on the Khumbu Glacier on 20 March 1953, roughly ten weeks before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on 29 May. For the following two decades the site served climbing expeditions only; the trekking route that now brings tourists here on foot developed through the 1970s, and organised commercial trekking companies began running guided trips to Base Camp in the 1980s. The camp's exact footprint has shifted since, since it sits on moving glacier ice rather than fixed ground, which is one reason guidebooks and expedition reports don't always agree on its elevation to the metre.