The Everest three passes trek: one circuit, three high crossings

The circuit links three valleys. You walk up the main Khumbu valley to base camp, cross east to west over the three passes, and come out down the Thame valley. Almost every itinerary, ours included, crosses Kongma La first, Cho La second and Renjo La last.

Here is the shape of it in one paragraph. You fly to Lukla at 2,860 m (9,383 ft) and walk the standard trail up to Namche Bazaar at 3,440 m (11,286 ft) and on to Dingboche at 4,410 m (14,469 ft), with the two acclimatization stops every good itinerary on this route builds in. You then turn east to Chhukung at 4,730 m (15,518 ft), cross Kongma La, and come down to Lobuche at 4,910 m (16,109 ft) on the base camp trail. You walk to Everest Base Camp at 5,364 m (17,598 ft) and up Kala Patthar at 5,545 m (18,192 ft) in the dark. Then you turn west, cross Cho La into the Gokyo valley and its lakes, cross Renjo La out of it, and walk down the Thame valley to Namche Bazaar and back to Lukla.

Our classic Everest Base Camp trek runs 15 days door to door from Kathmandu. The three passes circuit is longer than that on every version of it we sell. How much longer is a question our own product page currently answers two different ways, so this page answers it in words rather than in a number.

First, which kind of day. That day count is trip days, Kathmandu to Kathmandu, which is what you are sold and what you book flights around. It is not the same as trail days, which count only the days you actually walk, Lukla to Lukla. The page about the Everest Base Camp itinerary, day by day counts trail days, so a number there and a number here will not match, and neither is wrong.

Now the problem. Our parent company sells this circuit as Everest Three High Pass Trek, and its own page carries one duration in its trip facts panel and a different one in its own FAQ, further down the same page. Our fact store records that as a finding rather than quietly picking the larger of the two.

Our audit row for this product, held as a verified finding in our own store, reads: Consistent pricing. Product is 20 days while the FAQ says 17. Trip facts best season includes monsoon while the FAQ says spring and autumn only. Until the operator settles it, no page on this site publishes a single day count for the three passes trek.3 Checked 12 September 2026.

So here is what we can tell you honestly. Both of the figures our own page carries are longer than the classic trek, and even the shorter of the two is longer than it. The extra days buy three things: the Gokyo valley, the Thame valley, and the three crossing days themselves, none of which exists on the out and back route.

Then add slack on top of whatever number you are given. A closed pass costs days you cannot make up, the flight in and out of Lukla depends on the weather in both directions, and a circuit gives you fewer places to cut a day than an out and back route does. If your return flight is tight, this is the wrong trek. Ask us for the day count on the dates you are looking at and we will send the itinerary we would actually run, not a brochure figure.

The same goes for the price. There is no single published price for the three passes trek yet. The price comes to you in writing, in the quote for your dates, before you pay anything.

People assume the three passes trek is the classic trek with some extra scenery. It is not. It is a harder trip in four specific ways, and every one of them compounds the others.

Any of the three can be impassable, and Cho La is the one it happens to most. Fresh snow, ice on the glacier section, or wind on the top can shut a crossing for a day or for a week. This is normal. It is not a sign that something has gone wrong.

When it happens there are three moves and your guide picks one on the morning. You wait a day where you are and try again. You go round, which on this circuit usually means losing height and walking back up the main valley, and costs more days than waiting. Or you cut that pass out and finish the trip with two crossings instead of three.

What we will not do is put a group over a pass in conditions our guide does not like, and we will not let a client talk us into it because they have a flight home. That sounds obvious written down. It is one of the common ways people get into serious trouble on this route, and the pressure is almost always coming from the trekker rather than from the operator.

So book this trek with two things in place. Days of slack after your planned finish, because you will need them more often than not. And the acceptance, made now rather than at four in the morning at Dzongla, that you might come home having crossed two passes. People who agree to that in advance have a good trip when it happens. People who do not, do not.

You also need travel insurance that covers helicopter evacuation. We require it, and we do not sell it. For treks and passes like this circuit, the policy must cover you to at least 6,000 m (19,685 ft). What to check before you buy is on travel insurance for the Everest Base Camp trek.

Here is what that means if you need to come down by helicopter. We have no standing contract with any helicopter or rescue company, so there is no provider of ours to name. Your own insurer decides and sends the helicopter under your policy, and our guide makes the call to your insurer from the trail. So your policy has to name helicopter evacuation and repatriation, because nothing of ours stands behind it if it does not. Carry your insurer’s emergency number and your policy number, and give both to us before you fly.

This trek suits somebody who has already done a multi day trek, preferably at altitude, who can walk long days on rough ground for more than two weeks running, and who has slack in the calendar. That is the specification, and we mean all three parts of it.

On fitness, the bar is higher than the classic trek in a specific way rather than in general. You do not need to be faster. You need to still be walking well near the end of the trip, and to have a hard day left in you after two weeks of ordinary ones. The way to find out is to walk two long hilly days back to back, with a day pack, at the end of a week in which you already walked. If that second morning is a problem now, it will be a much bigger problem at Chhukung.

On experience, we ask for a previous multi day trek because of what goes wrong rather than because of the walking. Somebody who has been out for a week before knows what their own body does when it is tired and cold, knows how to look after their feet, and knows to say something early. On this route those three habits are worth more than a faster time up the hill.

Everything above is the cost. This is what you are buying with it, and for the right walker it is worth all of it. Three valleys instead of one, the Gokyo lakes, and long stretches of trail with almost nobody on them.

Start with the shape of the trip. The classic trek walks one corridor up and walks the same corridor back down, so roughly half your days are ground you have already seen. A circuit does not repeat itself. You come out down a different valley from the one you went up, and the last walking days are new country rather than a rewind.

Then the Gokyo valley, which is the part people who have done both talk about afterwards. It holds a chain of glacial lakes beside the Ngozumpa Glacier, held sacred by both Hindus and Buddhists, and our own route records say the viewpoint above the village shows four eight thousand meter peaks on a clear morning.3 Our ledger holds more than one published height for both the village and the viewpoint and has settled neither, so this page names them and gives no figure.2 The valley in detail belongs to the Gokyo and Cho La route to Everest Base Camp.

Then the emptiness. The main trail to base camp carries most of the traffic in the Khumbu, and in October you will not often be walking alone on it. Above Chhukung and in the Thame valley you can go a long way without meeting anybody. We publish no visitor count for either, because nobody publishes a trustworthy one and we are not going to make one up. What we will say is that our guides describe the Kongma La and the Thame valley as the quietest days on any route we run in this region.

Last, and this matters more than it sounds: you still get the whole of the walk to Everest Base Camp inside this trip. Base camp at 5,364 m (17,598 ft), the dawn climb up Kala Patthar at 5,545 m (18,192 ft), Namche Bazaar, the monastery at Tengboche. You are not trading the classic trek for the passes. You are adding to it.

There is a second product that walks the same three passes and adds a summit: Everest High Pass with Island Peak, which climbs Island Peak at 6,189 m (20,305 ft), also called Imja Tse. It is a separate trip, not an upgrade you decide on at Chhukung, and the difference is a difference in kind.

Everything on this page so far describes walking. Island Peak is mountaineering. You use crampons, a harness, an ice axe and a rope, you climb fixed ropes on a headwall below the summit ridge, and you cross a glacier where being roped together is the point rather than a formality. It is at the approachable end of climbing. It is still climbing, and the first time you put crampons on should not be on the mountain.

In outline, the trip walks the three passes in the reverse order to the trekking version, Renjo La first and Kongma La last, then goes from Chhukung up to Island Peak base camp, camps there rather than using a lodge, and climbs to the summit and back in one long night and day.3 The climbing permit for it is issued by Nepal Mountaineering Association, and the climb needs a guide qualified for it rather than a trekking guide.

Two honest notes before you ask us about it. The first is that our parent company’s page for that product currently contradicts itself about what is included, including whether porter service is part of it, so this page states none of its inclusions. Ask for porter service to be written into your quote.3 That trip does have a confirmed price, and it is printed on the three passes with Island Peak page, along with what to check on the quote. The second is that adding a summit to a trip that already has three passes in it makes a hard trip considerably harder, and it is the wrong place to try climbing for the first time. If you want the summit, ask us and we will tell you honestly whether to do it with the passes or on its own.

Every number above is listed here with the body that publishes it and the date we last read it. If a figure has changed since, write to us and we will correct the page and say that we did.