Everest traffic jams: mountaineer gives first person account of the ‘horrible, stressful and dangerous’ queues
- Fatima Deryan becomes the first Lebanese woman to climb Everest but is stuck behind inexperienced climbers, one leans on her in the queues
- Deryan is incensed by the Chinese climbers attitude to rubbish, as they leave trash all over the high camps
“It was horrible, stressful, dangerous – it was like waiting in a queue in a small, messy airport. You move in tiny increments,” she said. “I was very cold and worried about frostbite.”
Deryan said the crowds were “everywhere on the mountain.” She left her tent at Camp Four with her Sherpa at almost 8.30pm for the summit push and saw “a line of probably about 150 headlamps – stacked on top of each other, going up. I told myself – this is going to be a long night. I felt really strong, no headache, and I started to overtake people quickly. It is not really right, but some of them were not even moving.”
Many climbers “were just falling apart”, some at very dangerous sections, like the narrow ridge traverse between the Balcony, a platform at 8,400m, to the South Summit at 8,749m.
