Of all the photographs in a new Royal Geographical Society Everest exhibition at London’s Oxo Tower, one grainy image stands out. It shows Tenzing Norgay, crouched on all fours, shuffling along a ladder placed across a yawning crevasse at the notorious Khumbu Icefall. His eyes are fixed on a drop so deep that it plunges far out of camera shot. Some 10 metres ahead stands Sir Edmund Hillary. He is holding a rope attached to his companion, slowly guiding him to safety.
Even as silhouettes on Everest, superimposed against waves of untouched snow, the bond between the two is clear. The New Zealand beekeeper and the illiterate Sherpa climbing the mountain in splendid isolation. They are united in a desire to reach the top, their lives in each other’s hands.
Compare this to a new photograph in the June issue of National Geographic magazine, showing the traffic jam of climbers at the Hillary Step, a 40ft near-vertical rock face at 29,000ft that is the last obstacle to the summit. Such is the extent of overcrowding on the mountain that deaths (including four last year) have been blamed on people using up their oxygen supplies and losing body heat as they wait in line in the ''death zone’’ – where the available oxygen in the atmosphere is not enough to sustain human life – to reach the top. In some places, such as on the Lhotse Face at 25,000ft, up to 200 climbers can be waiting in a thin line that snakes down the mountain.
A crowd of climbers slog up the Lhotse Face, heading toward Camp IV, last stop before the summit (National Geographic/Andy Bardon Photography )
Tomorrow, it is 60 years to the day since Hillary and Norgay reached the summit, their conquest made possible in part by the groundbreaking research into oxygen intake, fluids and acclimatisation by physiologist Dr Griffith Pugh. Their success was relayed to The Times by means of porters travelling 50 miles back to the nearest cable head in Kathmandu. “Snow conditions bad. advance base abandoned. all well”, read the famous coded message sent by Jan [then James] Morris, the expedition journalist. The news reached Britain in time for the Queen’s coronation on June 2, the feelings of a jubilant nation summed up in the legendary Daily Express headline: “All This – And Everest Too”.
In meteorological terms, these weeks in late May remain the optimum time to attempt the climb and travel agencies have been offering discounted ''Anniversary Treks’’ to adventurous climbers, of whom 520 have made the summit so far this year. Last week, Arunima Sinha, 26, a trainee police officer from India, became the first female amputee to reach the top. Just two days later, an 80-year-old Japanese mountaineer became the oldest man to scale Everest; while in 2010, Jordan Romero, a 13-year-old American boy, was crowned its youngest conqueror.
Sherpa Tensing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953
Everest, once regarded as one of the most challenging of mountains, is acquiring a reputation as an easy climb. More or less anyone of suitable fitness and some training, it seems, can now make it to the top. Yesterday it emerged that plans for a ladder on the Hillary Step have been mooted in order to “ease congestion” and speed passage up and down to the summit. The idea has been backed by the world’s mountaineering authorities, who say it is a viable solution to the increasing number of climbers.
But there are problems associated with the rush to claim that you’ve stood at the highest point on earth. In May 1996, eight climbers were killed and several others stranded, some suffering life-changing injuries, in a sudden and severe blizzard near the summit. The tragedy, recounted by Jon Krakauer, a journalist and climber on that expedition, in his 1997 best-selling book Into Thin Air, was the first to raise questions about commercialisation and crowding on the mountain. Later reports blamed the sheer number of climbers that day (34) – several of whom were wealthy individuals with minimal experience – for causing bottlenecks, delays and ultimate disaster.
Headlamps trace a path to the summit a few hours before dawn (Kristoffer Erickson/National Geographic)
Last month there was a new development: three Western climbers were involved in a bloody brawl at 21,000ft with an estimated 100 Sherpas. Ice picks were brandished, rocks thrown and the snow stained with blood. Swiss climber Ueli Steck – one of the world’s celebrated mountaineers – was hit in the face with a stone.
The fight broke out after an altercation higher up the mountain, when the three climbers crossed paths with a group of Sherpas laying ropes for wealthy clients, who will pay up to £50,000 for the trek. Angry queues and criss-crossed ropes are now a common sight. All the evidence suggests that Everest is at risk of becoming a towering symbol of human intrusion, rather than endurance. Hillary and Norgay famously declined to say who reached the summit first in order to share the credit. Now people are elbowing each other on their way to the top, often with scant regard for their own safety and that of others.
“The huge difference now is the large expeditions and the sheer number of people who are on the mountain,” says Sir Chris Bonington, who led four expeditions up Everest in the Seventies and Eighties. “It’s just a conveyor belt to the top. I suspect it is completely out of control. There are accidents waiting to happen and it also creates extraordinary behaviour where people will just walk past climbers who are in trouble. They are so intent on getting to the top that they don’t care. The whole thing needs to be much better regulated. There is huge pressure on the mountain.”
Long before the British surveyors arrived, Everest was a sacred space for Buddhists in Tibet (where it is known as Chomolungma, or Mother Goddess of the Universe) and Nepal (Sagarmatha, or Goddess of the Sky). The nine Everest expeditions between 1921 and 1953 documented the tremendous reverence for the mountain from locals in the poverty-stricken villages they encountered.
Hilaree O'Neill steps across a bridge of aluminum ladders lashed together above a crevasse in the Khumbu Icefall (Andy Bardon/National Geographic)
Today, Nepal remains among the poorest countries in the world, ranking 157 out of 187 countries on the Human Development Index. The average annual wage is £492. But for those located on the Everest trail, the money keeps rolling in. Following the 1953 expedition, Jan Morris predicted the spoils that would come to the mountain once Western climbers began to arrive. “It was said we had permanently upset the economy of Nepal,” she wrote.
Now, there are around 35,000 visitors to the region annually, and rising. From 1953 to the beginning of this year’s climbing season, 6,149 ascents of the mountain had been made. The Nepalese government charged £2.2 million last year for permits for 337 climbers.
Jonathan Griffith, the British climber involved in last month’s brawl, has flagged up a new problem on the mountain: the “financial gap” that has soured the relationship between Sherpas and foreign mountaineers. “Everest attracts money,” he explained. “There are luxurious base camps, even at Camp 2 [at 17,600ft]. People are paying an awful lot of money to be here and they are carrying up these huge luxury tents. A lot of Western clients don’t even know the names of their Sherpas. By the time they get there, a cup of tea, sleeping bag and tent are already waiting.”
Adele Pennington, the only British woman to have climbed Everest twice, agrees. “Everest has become a commercial mountain,” she says. “I was in those queues last year and there were a couple of reasons why they happened, to do with the weather and so on. But it also showed there are far too many people going for the summit.”
In light of recent events, it is impossible not to scan through the 1953 photographs by Tom Stobart and George Lowe in the RGS exhibition, captured on a Kodak Retina II, and feel nostalgic for a time when the frailties of the human ego and avarice had not yet pitched camp on Everest. The saggy woollen jumpers, fighter pilot goggles, tin mugs of lemonade, oversized oxygen tanks, flapping tents and gap-toothed grins of the members of the Hillary expedition all seem so much more attractive than the neon micro fleeces of the modern-day climber.
Yet even 60 years ago there was big money in exploiting the mountain. Some 100 British companies sponsored the Hillary expedition. Bic pens and Viceroy razors used it as a means of promoting their brands. In April 1954, a British Investors’ Fair was held at London’s Olympia, with an “Everest Court” section to flog mountain merchandise.
And there is a reason why sponsors remain interested and people are prepared to spend so much money to get there. In truth, the mountain retains much of its allure. “I don’t think Everest has that sense of the unknown any more,” says Pennington. “But it still has that majesty. There is still something about standing on top of the world.”