It was not her first time up the mountain. In 1988, Bradey was the first woman to reach the summit of Mt Everest without oxygen.
When that photo was taken, Lake Hawea-based Bradey was about to summit Everest for the sixth time.
In a piece published on ABC in Australia, Bradey has revealed what really happened on Everest on May 22, the day that photo was taken.
"You don't have to be a mountaineer to see that image and to feel the fear," she wrote, explaining why moving too slow on Everest is deadly.
"There is only a third of the amount of oxygen on the summit and the weather on Everest at that altitude is cold and windy. It is dangerous to spend too much time there. If you are moving too slowly, your oxygen will run out," Bradey wrote.
The Kiwi adventurer says it actually happened to her once.
"The weather forecast was for very cold temperatures and very high winds. It was the middle of the night and the line of climbers was hardly moving and we began radioing each other discussing what to do.
"It was decided that if the weather didn't change, or if it got any colder, we would turn around," she recalls.
According to Bradey, "having a strategy to manage these situations is the difference between life and death".
Luckily, that time, just as they had decided to escape, the temperature became warmer and the line started to move.
"On the same day that the viral photo was taken last week, I was on the other side of Mount Everest, climbing to the summit for the sixth time," she said.
Bradey was doing her first ascent from the northern, Tibetan, side of the mountain with a small team of four people, including her client Roxanne Vogel, who'd paid Bradey to be her private guide, as well as two sherpas.
"When we reached the summit at dawn on the morning of the 22nd we were the only climbers on Everest coming from Tibet. We had no idea that on the other side of the mountain huge crowds were on their way from Nepal," she wrote.
"As we climbed, we passed three human bodies — a reminder of the dangers.
"In spite of this being my sixth ascent, I had not often seen bodies during a climb."
Bradey says the bodies were from another season, "still tangled in old ropes".
"I asked Mingma [one of the sherpas] if we should cut them down to get them off the path and he said no, it was more respectful to leave them there."
For Bradey, her experience is essential out on the mountain.
"I know how to turn around on the mountain, I can read my own oxygen bottle to be sure I don't run out, I can abseil on my own and climb without fixed ropes. I can probably get a client down the same way. I have communications and help from an experienced sherpa who also has access to plenty of oxygen."
But something else keeps her safe out there: she makes a point of not climbing on very crowded days.
"To a certain extent, on Everest, the more you pay the more support you can get. This means more of your equipment is carried by sherpas, which crucially includes more tanks of oxygen," she says.
"But you still have to be physically fit enough to climb the mountain. Wearing crampons on your feet, and scrambling up steep rocks and snow is not easy."
People also need to know techniques such as how to use a fixed rope as a handrail.
Sadly, not everyone who gets to go on Everest is skilled in these techniques.
For Bradey, seeing the bodies of those who perished is a "very sobering reminder of our fragile grasp on life at extreme altitudes".
It also brings on an important and "emotional" question: what's a climber to do if they see someone in trouble? Stop and help, and risk their lives as well, or carry on moving?
It's a question Bradey herself has been faced with before.
"I was part of the first ascent by a New Zealand team of Dhaulagiri — the world's seventh-highest mountain at 8,167m.
"On summit day, we passed a team who asked us to keep an eye out for a man and his sherpa who had been missing for three nights.
"We found him alive, gave him some water and continued our climb to the summit. Five hours later — after returning from the summit — we picked him up and descended with him."
The man's team had clearly not gone back up to look for him. They did not have enough oxygen to do so.
"This situation had already cost the life of a sherpa who stayed with the man and gave up his oxygen supply," Bradey wrote. "Waiting for this man left another eight people with life-changing frostbite — the loss of almost all fingers and or toes. This happened in excellent summit weather."
"If the mountain is full of that level of self-responsibility, what is your benchmark for self-sacrifice? These are extremely tricky questions that echo years later."
The issue of crowds on Everest is now in the spotlight but Bradey, who knows Everest well, says that is not the only danger.
More and more, people without enough experience are attempting to reach the top of Everest.
"It is quite common now that people attempting Everest have never climbed a peak over 7000m, and some, not many peaks at all."
What many don't consider is that, even after you reach the summit, your job is far from finished and you are still at high risk.
"Once you gain the ridge at 8500m on summit day, the journey travels along a rocky ridge with lots of tricky technical moves. There are three huge rock steps requiring ropes and ladders, and lots of traversing on sloping rocky ledges."
On the Tibetan side, there are often "bottlenecks" at the rock steps, making it "near impossible" to bring a sick person down.
Still, despite all the risks, Everest continues to lure adventurers from all over the world.
"What drives us to reach the highest point in the world is the same as what enthuses us to climb to a viewpoint alongside any road — curiosity, passion or even obsession," Bradey wrote.
"Climbing Everest without oxygen is a purist approach, the epitome of high-altitude climbing.
"Very few people can climb Everest without oxygen, or have even tried, and it remains one of the more elite goals for a high-altitude mountaineer."
Bradey herself has never tried to climb again without oxygen since her world-first summit.
"It's hard. You need experience, experience, experience: having attempted the Seven Summits isn't sufficient training for this kind of mountaineering.
"But beyond high-altitude climbing experience, you also need good footwork, good self-management and understanding of when you might need to turn back. A good ability to naturally acclimatise also helps, too.
"But as a guide, I must always use oxygen as the climb is not about me, it's about keeping my client safe, healthy and hopefully successful. To do it we need O2, boot heaters, good radio communication between guides and lots of sherpas carrying lots of oxygen."
Bradey says, when it comes down to it, it's about money as well.
Some companies, she says, don't provide enough oxygen to stay safe on the mountain when things go awry.
"This becomes a question of cost and many people decide to save the money. The cost of getting a canister of oxygen to the summit can easily run to US$1000 [NZ$1530] and possibly more. Each climber would be wise to take three to four litres to use the day before summit day and then a further four litres for summit day."
The key? "Better preparation, more oxygen and a good support team are all vital to a safe ascent."
However, the crowding issue is still there, mostly because the climbing season on Everest is very short for the amount of people who want to tick it off their list.
"Perhaps the answer is to spread the attempts out across two seasons," Bradey suggested in her piece.
"Because despite the dangers, Everest the mountain speaks for itself: it is a monolith, a journey, the epitome of big nature, a place where decision-making tests the human mind, a climb where should the oxygen regulator fail, most mere mortals would have to work with others to save their own lives, a place where small details display extreme loveliness, a hill of such extreme height that the view is no longer just about looking out — but being on the mountain."
