Gadgetgeek wrote:I think most people don't really understand what goes on at Everest and the role the Sherpas play....
But then I think a lot of people don't know a lot of things that don't effect them daily, and sometimes, not even then.
For many years, the most lucrative commercial guiding operation on Mt. Everest has been a company called Himalayan Experience, or Himex, which is owned by a New Zealand mountaineer named Russell Brice. In the spring of 2012, more than a month into the climbing season, he became increasingly worried about a bulge of glacial ice three hundred yards wide that was frozen tenuously to Everest’s West Shoulder, hanging like a massive sword of Damocles directly over the main route up the Nepal side of the mountain. Brice’s clients (“members,” in the parlance of Himalayan mountaineering), Western guides, and Sherpas repeatedly had to climb beneath the threatening ice bulge as they moved up and down the mountain to acclimatize and establish a series of higher camps necessary for their summit assault
wayno wrote:...plus you have the nepal govt taking millions in fees and passing on the bare minimum to the sherpas.
the govt had baned helicopters taking supplies above the ice fall but that is likely to change now...
ironically that could put some sherpas out of jobs and raise the cost of climbing the mountain, there would be less climbers on the mountains and less sherpas needed to get them to the top and shorten the distance sherpas have to carry supplies.
Gadgetgeek wrote:... we need to figure out a way to do it without leaving a trail of trash behind.
GPSGuided wrote:These issues are never easy. So, are the sherpas employed as individual free agents or by large companies or the govt? Sounds like there should be a insurance levy on all those recreational climbers for Sherpas' services.
GPSGuided wrote:Don't see the govt necessarily have to pay the insurance out of the climbing fees collected. The onus could be on the companies (levy on the climbers), possibly through a Western broker.
Gadgetgeek wrote:I feel like at this point someone like the UN or an NGO should provide funding to pay for the sherpas to clean up the slopes. It would take a long time, but ultimately I think they deserve to have control of the mountain, and allowing a decade to safely clean it up seems worth it to me. I think that there could still be lots of money to be made by tourism to the mountain, but summits should be severely limited, and approved by the sherpas. I would love to visit the mountain, even go up as far as some of the base camps, but I have no interest in summiting it. If people want to do dangerous things, thats fine, but we need to figure out a way to do it without leaving a trail of trash behind.
wayno wrote:yes but the govt can't justify charging the money they do on those peaks...
GPSGuided wrote:wayno wrote:yes but the govt can't justify charging the money they do on those peaks...
It's their country. They have every right to charge anything they want for foreigner access to their mountains. Not as if Nepal Govt have to answer to Australian or NZ voters. Visiting and climbing their mountain is a privilege, not an automatic entitlement.
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