A spike in the popularity of Mount Everest “taster” expeditions that take climbers across a dangerous glacier has raised fears of overcrowding and fatalities.
Trips to Everest’s Base Camp, at an altitude of 5,380m, have long been offered by travel companies as a way for tourists to experience life on the world’s highest mountain.
A number of companies in Russia and the United States are now offering expeditions to Camp 2 that necessitate crossing the Khumbu Icefall, a section of Everest glacier that is one of the most hazardous parts of the mountain. In 2014 an ice avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 Nepalese climbers.
“It involves crossing crevasses on aluminium ladders, climbing near vertical sections and venturing into difficult areas of icy rubble and chunks of ice. It is exhausting and scary,” Angela Benavides, a journalist at the Explorers Web adventure website, said.
The 7 Summits Club, a Russian adventure company, is advertising “trekking” to Camp 2 that promise “impressions and adrenaline’ and the chance to “feel like a full-fledged participant in a climbing expedition.” The 16-day trips cost $14,900.
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Everest’s Camp 2, at 6,400m, is set on the mountain’s Valley of Silence in Nepal. Critics say the danger is that less experienced climbers will be tempted to try to reach the camp, creating potentially deadly problems for other mountaineers.
“Above Everest Base Camp it’s about climbing, not trekking,” said Stefan Nestler, an adventure reporter, who said companies often downplay the dangers involved in reaching Camp 2.
“The more people are in the icefall at the same time and the longer it takes them to cross it, the greater the risk that something will happen to them there,” he added.
The 7 Summits Club, which has been taking people to Everest for two decades, described the expeditions to Camp 2 as preparation for people who are not yet ready to scale Everest. However, it insisted that it only takes experienced climbers and provides each expedition member with bottled oxygen and a personal sherpa.
“We have a very long selection process and the number of people in all our expeditions is strictly limited,” a spokeswoman for the company said.
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“The problem is not one company in particular, but the effect of many people from many companies getting in the icefall, no matter their experience, fitness level or skills,” Benavides said.
Not everyone is forced to scale the glacier. Nestler said that in recent years some wealthy adventurers had paid to be flown by helicopter to Camp I at 6,100m to avoid the Khumbu Icefall. The practice is technically forbidden as only rescue flights are allowed on Everest. “I call this ‘heli-doping,’ ” he said.
Overcrowding at the summit of Everest was highlighted in 2019 by a photograph that showed an estimated 320 climbers, guides and sherpas waiting in a long line to step onto the summit. Critics likened the lines to a “bus queue” and a “conga.”
The Nepalese side of Everest, the south side, is at present the only option for climbers since China closed its borders over the coronavirus pandemic. Nepal last year banned “tourist climbers” from trying to conquer Everest after 11 people died on the slopes in one year.
