By Genni Abilock

As day turns to night a slow moving line of at least a hundred begins to form, those waiting in line remaining stagnant in bumper-to-bumper traffic as they patiently await the attraction that lies ahead.

 

No, this isn’t Disney World; this is modern day Mount Everest.

 

Indeed, since Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay became the first to reach this summit of the tallest mountain in the world on May 29th, 1953, a lot has changed.

 

While over 60 years ago Everest was once regarded as a great feat, a place where only the most experienced climbers climb to test their courage, skill, and endurance, today, as a result of overcrowding, increased accessibility, and pollution, some say this feat means less than it did half a century ago.

 

According to “Maxed out on Everest,” an article published in National Geographic last June, today climbers report that the mountain’s routes “are not only dangerously crowded,” but are “also disgustingly polluted,” climbers reporting siting “garbage leaking out of the glaciers and pyramids of human excrement

befouling the high camps.”

 

What can be done about this?

 

“We should be looking at how to control numbers on Everest,” said Russell Brice, owner of Himalayan Experience, a organization regarded as “the largest and most sophisticated guiding operation on Everest.”

Unfortunately, these numbers are extremely difficult to control.

Indeed, while organizations like SPCC, the Sagarmatha Pollution Committee, along with Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, have bean attempting to change the mountain’s fate, constantly raising their voices over the garbage issues prevalent on the mountain, according to Brice, the local authorities do not know how to deal with this problem, and are more interested in the money that it generates.

And Everest is not the only place experiencing this change.

 

According to Brice, there has been an explosion of Adventure Tourism throughout the world, and is happening on all mountains.

 

Indeed, Russell,  “widely reputed as one of the most professional leaders of all guided expeditions to the Himalayas,” has experienced this change not only on Everest, but also on the summits of mountains like Manaslu, Cho Oyo, Himal Chuli, Shishapangma, and Ama Dablam.

However, though today more climbers have gone up than ever before, and though the technology aiding climbers has increased, the danger is still very, very real.

On Friday, April 18th, 2014, an event noted as the deadliest accident in the history of Everest occurred after an avalanche erupted on the mountain, killing 16 Nepalese Sherpa guides, and seriously injuring 13 others.

As a result, in recent weeks many major Everest guides have cancelled “planned ascents,” many hoping to reach Everest’s 29,035-foot summit “are packing up and returning home” before even attempting the ascent.

However, despite the problems facing great mountains like Everest, not all is lost.

 

While compared to the first historic Everest ascent over sixty years ago, today it is said that neither “the world's tallest mountain nor the climb itself are quite what they used to be,” according to Brice, to many it is still a worthwhile objective.

 

It is not simply the climb; it is the journey, and the sheer beauty of Everest that keeps the mountain going.