Ed Viesturs On Mt. Everest’s Conga Line Mess: What Can Be Done?

In Part 1 of our interview series with American mountaineer Ed Viesturs, we discussed the Guinness World Record folks stripping the great Reinhold Messner of his long-held title of first to summit all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks sans supplemental oxygen – and putting Viesturs in first place instead. Here, we focus on the over-commercialization of Mt. Everest. So far this year, the mountain has claimed 17 climbers, most-ever for one year; more than 600 people summited via a crowded “conga line,” as Viesturs puts it. Following are edited excerpts from a longer phone conversation with the celebrated mountaineer.

Jim Clash: Why is Mt. Everest seeing increasingly large crowds each year? Haven’t we learned anything from the deadly “Into Thin Air” disaster in 1996?

Ed Viesturs: What happens, and I’ve seen it before even with just a handful of teams on the mountain let alone the droves that are there now, is that everybody waits for a summit window, the day they all believe will be the perfect one. Rather than thinking that there may be two, three or four more days after that, summit fever kicks in, group-think. One or two teams go, and there goes the freight train.

You see some of the older, seasoned guides sitting back at base camp, letting the crowds go. Sure enough, later there’s another window of good weather. They go up on their own with no crowds. It’s the fear of missing that only opportunity, and the pressure of, “That group is going, we need to go as well. If we miss the day, clients and sponsors won’t be happy.”

Clash: What to do?

Viesturs: The guides need to coordinate their efforts in some way, say, “You guys go now, we’ll go on a different date.” That doesn’t seem to be happening. Nepal tourism is a big industry, and Everest is a gigantic part of that. Climbers pay a fee per person to have their names on a permit – I think it’s $10,000 each. You can’t fault Nepal for that. They’d rather sell more permits than less. I don’t think they care if there are 5,000 people on Everest. It’s generating income. Again, as an individual, you have to decide, “Do I want to be there with that many people?” That’s the way it is.

Everest is such a draw, right? It’s a brand. Aspiring mountain climbers, when they come home, want to say they’ve climbed Everest. It’s a big deal. And it will be forever, because it’s the highest mountain on Earth, has this magnetism. There’s that demand, and the guides provide the services. They make money, too.

Clash: Those lines are hundreds of climbers long. God forbid a storm hits.

Viesturs: There are a lot of people up there that are barely managing to put one foot in front of the other, focusing on one thing, the summit. Most don’t have the extra energy if there were to be a catastrophe. They also don’t have the skill-set to help themselves, let alone try and help others.

If a storm does come in, it would be a pretty big mess. We certainly hope that doesn’t happen. Those conga lines, as we call them, are pretty scary. Imagine you being No. 100, waiting for the first person in line to take a step, so that five minutes later you get to take your step. Plus there are bottlenecks, where people are waiting to to down while others are still going up.

Clash: It’s gotten so crazy that helicopters are used on Everest now, right? And not just for rescues. I mean, c’mon man.

Viesturs: Not so much on the way up, but on the way down. At Camp 2, some clients will all of a sudden decide they need a helicopter because they don’t want to go through the [Khumbu] Icefall a last time. They’ll come up with some sort of excuse, “Oh I’m injured, I’m sick, I need a rescue. I have the money, fly me off from Camp 2.”

That’s what happens a lot these days. They don’t want to do those last few steps to get off of the mountain. Next they’re going to start flying people up to Camp 2, then why not Camp 3? Hey, then let’s fly all the way up to Camp 4, get the whole thing over with. Where do you draw the line? Ask yourself later what journey did you just make? What’s the process? I think a lot of people want to skip all of that.

[When I’ve guided there], I’ve wanted people to enjoy the process, earn their way to the top, do some of the work, contribute. In doing that, you also learn. I’ll show you how to put up a tent. By the second or third time we do it, you’re going to put up your own tent. You’ll have learned something about the journey, and I think a lot of people today are missing that.

MORE FROM FORBESEd Viesturs: ‘Reinhold Messner Was First, Always Will Be’By Jim Clash