New safety rules delayed after deadly jam
The images shocked and angered the world: hundreds of climbers trapped near Mount Everest’s summit, hooked to a single safety line on a ridge with a several-thousand-foot drop, their oxygen cylinders emptying until a few people died from exposure.
The traffic jam during last spring’s climbing season, one of the deadliest on the planet’s highest mountain, underlined what veteran alpinists have been saying for years: Ego, inexperienced climbers, big payouts and chronic mismanagement — including the dangerous practice of cutting corners on vital safety equipment — have turned Everest into a circus at 29,000 feet.
After the season ended, Nepal’s
government announced robust safety rules intended to weed out inexperienced climbers, reduce the number of people on Everest and prevent another pileup, which was blamed for some of the 11 deaths in 2019.
But now, the government says
the new rules will not be imposed for the coming climbing season, which begins in April and lasts through May. Despite international scrutiny and intense pressure from climbing groups to tighten operations on Everest, officials say the rules need further review before they can be put in place.
Kedar Bahadur Adhikari, the secretary of Nepal’s Tourism Ministry, said the rules, which were introduced last August, had yet to receive approvals from several government offices, including the defense, law, finance and forest ministries.
He said officials also needed to see whether Nepali expedition operators “were OK with some of the restrictions,” though mountaineers say the companies’ involvement in negotiations should be limited because of their financial stakes.
Santa Bir Lama, the president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, an independent climbing group that manages Everest and helped draft the new safety regulations, said Nepal’s financial desperation was one major reason behind the delay.
He said that officials could approve the new measures in a couple of weeks if they wanted, but that government climbing permits — which cost $11,000 per person for Everest — provide crucial cash flow for Nepal.
“If something goes wrong, the tourism minister should be personally responsible,” Lama said. “Nobody wants to come to Nepal to die.”
On the northern side of the mountain, which falls in China, stricter safety regulations are in place. But there are few limits on who can get a permit to climb Everest from Nepal, where most ascents occur.
Last year, officials granted a record 381 permits, a figure that did not include hundreds of Nepali support staff.