by Simon Parker, The Telegraph, April 4, 2018
Spring in the Himalayas brings with it the start of the brief Everest climbing season – and for the next six to eight weeks, a thousand or so foreigners will descend on Nepal in a bid to scale the highest mountain on the planet. The weary climbers who make it to the top will join an exclusive club of roughly 8,500 people who’ve summited since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s first successful ascent on May 29th 1953.
But after almost a century of Everest expeditions, 288 deaths and several tonnes of festering rubbish left behind, can we finally call time on these Western vanity projects?
For many adventurous souls, climbing Everest is both a topographical and existential pinnacle – and a few years ago I too harboured ambitions of one day reaching its icy peak. At least that was until I started to research the finer details; dozens-deep queues to the summit, thousands of empty gas canisters, scuffles between climbers, and frozen corpses. Would an ascent have provided anything more than a massaging of my white, middle class ego?
The mountaineer George Mallory famously rebuked a cheeky reporter in 1923 that dared to question his ambitions to reach the summit of Everest with three immortal words: “because it’s there.” But almost a century later, with Nepal desperately in need of sustained, considered tourism, as opposed to fleeting trophy hunters eating imported freeze-dried rations in tents, do George Mallory’s words have any modern relevance? Moreover, how many exhausted “adventurers” do we need to see clutching union jacks before we just a bit... bored.
More people are summiting Everest than ever before and during last year’s two-month ascent window 648 paying climbers (with the assistance of about 350 sherpas) reached the summit. It’s becoming cheaper, too, with an increasing number of operators in business – driving down the ballpark £60,000, fully escorted price tag, to the bargain-basement figure of £20,000.
If this sounds like your opportunity to get up there, though, it’s certainly worth investigating the operator’s track record with the same meticulous scrutiny you’d give your crampons. “You pretty much get what you pay for,” the two-time Everest summiteer, Andrew Lock, told The Australian in March. “You get your permit and transport to base camp, food and accommodation, but beyond that there’s very limited service on the mountain. Once you go up, you are basically on your own.”
The world's most beautiful mountains
I’ve been lucky to see Everest with my own eyes, while flying in a 28-seater plane between the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, and the Bhutanese city of Paro. Protruding from a long row of incisor-like Himalayan peaks it resembled a pointed canine tooth, sharper and angrier than most of its neighbours.
Gawping from the plane window – for the first time ever, arching my neck upwards, rather than down, I could fully comprehend the allure of trying to get to the top. The reality, however, is that the tallest mountain on the planet has become a cash cow that’s being milked for everything it’s worth by foreign operators.
Granted, many climbers raise huge sums of cash for charity, but most are international organisations with their own, perfectly credible agendas – meanwhile Nepal remains one of the poorest countries on the planet. Commendably, this season’s planned ascent of TV presenter Ben Fogle and the former Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton has set out to raise one million pounds for the British Red Cross – we can only hope the majority will be syphoned into local projects.
The Nepalese government does enforce an $11,000 (£7,700) levy on every foreign climber who takes on Everest, raking in around $3 million (£2.1m) annually, but the average sherpa earns between just $3,000 and $5,000 a season. It doesn’t take much of an economist to work out that someone, somewhere, is getting very rich. Plus, of the 181 deaths on the Nepalese side of the mountain, the majority have been sherpas.
I’m not for one moment suggesting that injustices like these don’t exist all over the world – and especially in the tourism industry. I’m just not sure how comfortable I’d feel, lapping up the limelight as a wind-burnt Westerner, knowing that I’d put a team of significantly harder working Nepalis in such terribly reimbursed peril. Are we conveniently forgetting how all those hefty 40kg loads of butane, protein bars and cooking utensils miraculously make it up to camps at 26,000 feet?
At a glance | Mount Everest record breakers
As perennially travelling journalists I believe we have a duty and an obligation to tell it how we see it, however much that might irk the proponents of a place or activity. Sure, we deal predominantly in adjective-heavy aspiration and positivity, but sometimes, hopefully you’ll excuse us the occasional foray into doom mongering.
Across just five years of living and reporting in Peru I watched as the trekking industry swelled to, in my opinion, an untenable size. Some of the hiking routes are hideously oversubscribed, littered with trash and poisoned by tour operators cutting corners in favour of cash flow. I’ve been at quieter theme parks during half term than any given morning at Machu Picchu.
The travel trend to avoid before you die | How the ‘bucket list’ is ruining the world
As the planet’s population swells and our disposable incomes grow, more of us will have the opportunity to travel – and I hope that will expand our collective horizons. Just occasionally, though, deciding not to go somewhere, or do something, could have more of a positive impact on a place than actually visiting.
In fact, one of the best compliments I ever received from a Telegraph reader was when they told me that they’d enjoyed something I’d written about a place they’d always wanted to visit, but decided not to go themselves, having read my article. Nepal certainly needs tourism and there are dozens of alternative treks to keep the adventurous dosed-up with adrenaline. But just “because it’s there” doesn’t mean it has to be Everest.
15 mountain holidays you should conquer instead
This article was written by Simon Parker from The Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].
Related Stories
Famous Mount Everest Obstacle May Have Collapsed
Plane Crashes in Kathmandu, Nepal
Island Made Famous by Leonardo DiCaprio Film 'The Beach' Closes Under Strain of Mass Tourism
Virtuoso Calls Sustainable Tourism a “Transformative Movement”