For Melbourne woman Jen Willis, climbing Mount Everest was a dream imagined at a young age.
“When I was about eight, my grandpa had some pictures hung up of mountaineers and some mountaineering books,” she said.
“He gave me a brooch of a mountaineering boot and an ice axe, so that was a treasure that I put away.”
In April, the 51-year-old mother-of-three set off to Nepal with the intention of becoming the first Australian with MS to summit the world’s highest mountain.
“My mental mantra to myself at one point was, ‘just keep your eye on the prize, Jen’, focus and keep going,” she said.
But while she knew the risks, she didn’t expect to be faced with the grim reality of death on the mountain.
“As we were heading up from Camp 3 to Camp 4 there was a sherpa who had passed away,” she said, referring to one of the guides who support climbers.
The body was lying across the ropes climbers are attached to and Willis said she had no choice but to step over it.
“To continue climbing was a matter of having to move around where he was deceased on the rope,” she said.
Willis, who has just returned to Australia, made it to 8,000 metres but was unable to complete her dream of reaching Mount Everest’s summit of 8,849 metres.
“I guess that prize wasn’t necessarily summiting, [it was] showing up each day, taking myself higher and higher,” she said.
The number of people climbing Mount Everest has increased over the years but Yubaraj Khatiwada, the director of Nepal’s Department of Tourism, blames the high number of fatalities this year on poor weather.
“Due to the worse weather, we lost more members this season [and] hundreds of members faced frostbite due to bad weather,” he said in a statement.
Khatiwada said if the number of climbers permitted was spread out evenly across the season, it would be safer: “On average, 16 members per day for summit is not so crowded”.
But the weather has meant fewer days for climbing, he said, resulting in overcrowding in what’s known as the ‘death-zone’, the area above 8,000 metres where there is a lack of oxygen.
“It seems quite [crowded] just due to unfavourable weather which creates [a] shorter window for climbing.”
Alan Arnette, an American mountaineer who summited Mount Everest in 2011 and writes a blog about the climbing season, said overcrowding is an increasingly frequent and dangerous occurrence.
“If you’re up there and you’re in a line of 40 or 50 or 100 people, it’s like being on a single lane highway … you can’t pass them because everyone is clipped into the same safety rope,” he said.
“If the person in front refuses to move over because they’re moving too slow, or if their sherpa or guide can’t get them to move, then everybody queues and begins to run through their supplemental oxygen.
“There’s a phenomenon called ‘summit fever’, where you get so obsessed with getting to the top that you suspend reality, you suspend good judgement, and you make bad decisions.
In 1984, Tim Macartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer became the first Australians to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The pair climbed without using supplementary oxygen via a new route on the North Face.
“It was incredible being able to go to the world’s best-known mountain … and have it all to ourselves,” Macartney-Snape said.
“Getting to the summit was only fully realised at the last minute … [we saw] the most fantastic sunset you could ever believe … there was every colour of the rainbow in the sky, it was the most wonderful feeling looking out on the world, being totally alone and being overpowered by the wonder of it all.
Macartney-Snape calls the overcrowding and bottlenecks on the mountain in recent times, “a nightmare scenario”.
“One of the things that allows you to combat cold is that you’re moving … there’s no win at staying put above 8,000 metres,” he said.
“You’re not so aware of what’s going on in your body at altitude because of the lack of oxygen and your brain is a little bit flaky.
Tourism is one of Nepal’s largest industries and this season officials issued a record 479 summit permits for Mount Everest. Permits cost about $16,500 and require some mountaineering experience, but the government insists it is not commercialising the mountain.
Nepal’s Ambassador to Australia, H.E. Kailash Raj Pokharel, said: “The demand is very high due to various reasons and many people would like to climb, but certainly our intention is not to overcrowd Mount Everest, it should be manageable and safe.”
On safety, he said: “It’s a question sometimes if the inclement weather happens, and if the preparation is not well, in particular, the oxygen cylinders required should be adequate.
“If for one or two days the weather is clear, everyone wants to rush.”
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There are calls for the government checks needed to issue a summit permit to be more rigorous to ensure inexperienced climbers are not left vulnerable.
Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa has been a guide on Everest since 2003 and has summited Everest three times. He is also the secretary of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association. He says one of the hardest parts of his job is telling a climber they cannot continue to the summit.
“It’s quite challenging because they’ve paid for the summit and people are only thinking about getting to the top … their goal,” he said.
“In my experience when guiding, I need to check the condition of the clients to see if they are strong.
“It depends on the weather conditions too – and the wind conditions, if there are strong winds there is no option, I have to tell them we need to turn back. It’s not only dangerous but also the possibility to get frostbite.
He worries the permit system is putting climbers at risk.
“There are thousands of people who want to summit, I think that’s not a good idea,” he said.
“We should check their skill, check their experience, if they are technical enough, if they have climbed before to some 8,000 metres.
“If they had a good experience, then we should give them permission.”
That suggestion is supported by Macartney-Snape.
“It’s an unfair system; if you have a lot of resources, i.e. if you have a lot of money, you can virtually pay your way up to the top,” he said.
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He suggests prospective summiteers climb a number of peaks, beginning at a 6,000 to 7,000-metre peak in a designated remote region where there is limited tourism, followed by a 7,000-plus metre peak elsewhere in the country before qualifying to climb Mount Everest.
“What that will do is take the pressure off the Everest region and deliver the benefits of tourism to the poorer parts of the country,” he said.