Tourism: Climbers are looking for a safe route to Mount Everest

tourism
Climbers are looking for a safe route to Mount Everest

The Khumbu Icefall is particularly scary for many who climb Mount Everest. It is an icy river between the base camp and the first of four high camps, the course of which changes every year.

Climbers have to cross different places – often with ladders, harnesses and ropes. Again and again there are avalanches and accidents. Around 40 people have died from the Khumbu Icefall so far, according to Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism, which keeps statistics on the mountains. In 2014, 16 Sherpas died there in an avalanche.

But those wishing to climb the mountain as part of an organized tour by an expedition company usually have to cross the Khumbu. At least if you go from Nepal, which is what most do, according to data in the expedition archive Himalayan Database. There is an alternative route from Tibet – but it costs more and no foreigner has been granted a permit for the route since the pandemic began.

At the age of 70 on Mount Everest

Now a French and a Nepalese mountaineer and their respective sons plan to present a new route from Nepal – one that avoids the Khumbu Icefall and is therefore safer according to the mountaineers. 70-year-old Marc Batard told the German Press Agency that he saw the possibility of the new route last year when he was out sightseeing in a helicopter. Later, he and his Nepalese friend Pasang Nurbu Sherpa and a team explored the area on foot – up to an altitude of 5,880 meters – and from the air, and attached climbing hooks and ropes to parts of the trail.

In May they now want to climb the 8848 meter high Everest summit on the new route. According to Billi Bierling from Bavaria, who is currently responsible for the “Himalayan Database”, if Batard comes up without an oxygen bottle, he would be the oldest person to do so. And by his own admission he intends to do so.

Batard is known in the mountaineering scene as a particularly fast mountaineer who scaled Mount Everest in just 22.5 hours, as the well-known and now deceased US Himalayan expedition chronicler Elizabeth Hawley wrote in 1989.

If the team is successful, Batard estimates that it will be another two or three years before other expedition companies can take mountaineers up the alternative route. Among other things, more climbing hooks would have to be attached to the rock.

Is the new route really safer?

Not everyone in the mountaineering scene is convinced of the new route. Experienced mountain guide Pemba Sherpa says, “Why would expedition companies and mountaineers choose the Khumbu Icefall route for so many years when there was a safer, better route?” The American mountaineer and blogger Alan Arnette is also skeptical. He says that the route is technically difficult and therefore an alternative for professional climbers if necessary, but not for the masses of Everest climbers.

The Nepalese Ministry of Tourism said the government would recognize the new trail as the new official route if they found it safe.

According to the Ministry of Tourism, more than 300 foreigners, including half a dozen Germans and one Ukrainian, and their Nepalese teams are on Everest in this main spring season, according to the Ministry of Tourism, in addition to Batard and Nurbu. The first team of all-black climbers trying to reach the top is there, the Himalayan Times reported.

Other records are also expected this spring: The Nepalese mountain guide Kami Rita Sherpa, for example, wants to break his own Everest record and stand on the top for the 26th time. Mountain guide Lakpa Sherpa also wants to break her record and stand on the mountain for the 10th time. According to data from the «Himalayan Database», the two lead the list with the highest number of Everest ascents for men and women respectively.

dpa