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Agence France-Presse

Everest is the ultimate mountaineering “trophy”, but a rising number of inexperienced climbers are running huge risks by trying to reach the top of the world.
Everyone from airline pilots to online media sales executives are waiting at base camp for a chance to scale the 8,848 metre (29,030 foot) mountain this season.

A drop in fees has meant more people can try to fulfil their dream of conquering the world’s highest peak, but there are grim predictions that an increasing number will not make it home.
Critics warn bargain operators – who have slashed the price of an Everest ticket to as low as US$20,000 – accept even the most inexperienced climbers. Meanwhile, expensive rivals, who charge around US$70,000, have smaller teams and require proven climbing ability from clients. 

In the 1980s Nepal’s government only allowed one team per route on Everest, which meant only a handful of experienced and sponsored climbers could get a foothold. Since the limit was scrapped in the 1990s operators have crowded the slopes for a slice of the lucrative industry. 
This year there are more than 500 paying climbers – a bumper year. Last year six people died.

Guy Cotter, who has been guiding on Everest for 27 years, warned that many new climbers lack experience.
“Nowadays people can go on the internet and buy the cheapest expedition onto the mountain. But there is no criteria for experience with some of these operators,” said the owner of New Zealand-based Adventure Consultants. “They are not mountaineers. They are just people who want to claim the prize of climbing Mount Everest. They are hunting for that trophy.”


Tenzing Norgay, the first man to summit Everest with New Zealander Edmund Hillary in 1953, only reached the top on his seventh attempt. 
Today amateurs expect to do it on their first try, prompting many to take higher risks, lulled into a false sense of security by the thousands who have succeeded.

“Someone else has done this before me, so why can’t I do it?” said 33-year-old Briton Daniel Horne, who used to work in online media.
He paid US$70,000 to climb Everest and said it would take years to find the money and time to make another attempt if he fails: “Unless they tell me to turn around, I’m going to keep going.”


Many predicted a turning point after 1996 when eight people died descending the summit.
“With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill. The trick is to get back down alive,” Rob Hall – a guide that year – reportedly said.
Critics say Hall and rival guide Scott Fischer, who both died that season, were too focused on their clients’ investment in getting to the summit.

“I predict that we’ll have more fatalities on the mountain until the operators mature,” said Russell Brice, owner of Himalayan Experience, who has been taking people up Everest since 1994. 
He also blamed the attitude of some climbers.
“Summit fever is a real disease. People just go on. It’s the blaseness of ‘It’s just a toe’,” he said, referring to the risk of losing digits to frostbite.


Everest guide Ang Tshering Lama, who last year rescued a climber and his guide who refused to turn around and give up his US$20,000 fee, pointed the finger at climbers’ egos.
“People say, ‘I climbed’. But they can’t say ‘I am a climber’,” said Lama. “You need to be a climber to be on this mountain.”


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Nepal

As price comes down, risk goes up for Everest ‘trophy hunters’

File photo of mountaineers climbing past the Hillary Step while pushing for the summit of Mount Everest. Photo: AFP

In this photograph taken on April 25, 2018, trekkers and porters gather at Everest Base Camp, some 140km northeast of the Nepali capital Kathmandu. Hundreds of climbers cleared to scale Everest are acclimatising at its base camp, officials said April 26, including a record number of Nepali women climbers, as the season marks 65 years of the first summit of Everest. / AFP PHOTO / PRAKASH MATHEMA

(FILES) In this file photograph taken on April 20, 2015, Mount Everest (Background) and the Nupse-Lohtse massif (Foreground) are seen from the village of Tembuche in the Kumbh region of north-eastern Nepal. Poor regulation, overcrowding and climate change is pushing Everest climbers away from Nepal to China, where a rival path to the top of the world threatens a long-standing source of revenue for the cash-strapped Himalayan nation. Veteran climbing outfits, fed up with amateurs and a lax attitude to safety on Nepal's southern flank of the 8,848 metre (29,029-foot) peak, are starting to shift operations to Everest's north side in Tibet. / AFP PHOTO / ROBERTO SCHMIDT / TO GO WITH 'NEPAL-CHINA-EVEREST-MOUNTAINEERING' BY ANNABEL SYMINGTON

This picture taken on April 26, 2018, shows Guy Cotter during an interview with AFP at Everest Base Camp, some 140km northeast of Kathmandu. Everest is the ultimate mountaineering "trophy", but the rising number of inexperienced climbers attempting to tackle the summit are running huge risks to reach the top of the world. / AFP PHOTO / PRAKASH MATHEMA / To go with NEPAL-EVEREST-SOCIAL-MOUNTAINEERING,FEATURE by Annabel Symington

This picture taken on April 24, 2018, shows climbers at Everest Base Camp practicing their techniques on the Khumbu glacier before trying to summit Everest, some 140km northeast of the Nepali capital Kathmandu. Everest is the ultimate mountaineering "trophy", but the rising number of inexperienced climbers attempting to tackle the summit are running huge risks to reach the top of the world. / AFP PHOTO / PRAKASH MATHEMA / To go with NEPAL-EVEREST-SOCIAL-MOUNTAINEERING,FEATURE by Annabel Symington

This picture taken on April 22, 2018, shows British climber Daniel Horne preparing his gear in his tent at Everest Base Camp, some 140km northeast of Kathmandu. Everest is the ultimate mountaineering "trophy", but the rising number of inexperienced climbers attempting to tackle the summit are running huge risks to reach the top of the world. / AFP PHOTO / PRAKASH MATHEMA / To go with NEPAL-EVEREST-SOCIAL-MOUNTAINEERING,FEATURE by Annabel Symington

China denies changing height of Mount Everest, as row leaves Beijing, Kathmandu 12 feet apart

China and Nepal have different opinions on whether the height of Mount Everest should include its snowcap. Photo: AFP

In this May 18, 2013 photo released by Alpenglow Expeditions, a climber pauses on the way to the summit of Mount Everest, in the Khumbu region of the Nepal Himalayas. Nepal will slash the climbing fees for Mount Everest to attract more mountaineers to the world's highest peak, even as concerns grow about the environmental effects of thousands of climbers who already crowd the mountain during the high season. Madhusudan Burlakoti, head of Nepal's Department of Mountains, said Friday, Feb. 14, 2014 that beginning next year, it will cost $11,000 per climber to climb Everest. (AP Photo/Alpenglow Expeditions, Adrian Ballinger) MANDATORY CREDIT, EDITORIAL USE ONLY

85-year-old aiming to be oldest Everest climber dies at base camp

Nepalese mountain climber Min Bahadur Sherchan. Photo: AP

(FILES) In this photograph taken on February 10, 2017, Nepalese mountaineer Min Bahadur Sherchan shows off his 2008 Guinness World Record certificate for being the oldest person to summit Mount Everest -- a record that was later broken in 2013 -- during an interview with AFP in Kathmandu. An 85-year-old ex-Gurkha who was attempting to reclaim his title as the world's oldest person to summit Mount Everest died at base camp on May 6. Min Bahadur Sherchan was on a bid to reclaim a title that he lost to Japanese mountaineer Yuichiro Miura in 2013 when he perished. / AFP PHOTO / Prakash MATHEMA

Four recent films about Everest, from Hollywood affair to gritty documentaries

A scene from Sherpa, a documentary which happened to capture the deadly avalanche of 2014 that killed 16 Sherpas.

--ONLINE ONLY-- This handout image shows a scenes from the movie “The Himalayas” . Photo / HANDOUT [11JULY2016 FEATURES LIFE]

--ONLINE ONLY-- This handout image shows a scenes from the movie “ Meru ” . Photo / HANDOUT [11JULY2016 FEATURES LIFE]

Still of 'Everest', 2015 British-American drama film directed by Baltasar Kormakur and written by William Nicholson, starring Jake Gyllenhaal [09AUG2015 REVIEW SUNDAY - FILM LEAD]

News

Asia

South Asia

Inexperienced climbers lured by cut-price expeditions and the status reaching the summit brings should think twice before heading to the mountain, long-time guides say
