Bad news is good news, learns every prospective journalist. But actually it also can be good news, if there is no bad one. This spring, this applies particularly to Mount Everest, after the disasters of the past two years. In spring 2014, the season on the Nepalese side ended prematurely, after an ice avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall had killed 16 Nepali climbers. 2015 even turned out to be a year without summit success on both sides of the mountain due to the devastating earthquake in Nepal. On the south side, 19 people lost their lives, when the quake triggered an avalanche that hit the Base Camp. Later all climbers departed. On the north side, the Chinese authorities closed all eight-thousanders after the earthquake in the neighboring country. This year, in my view, the Everest season is running so far largely normal.

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Russell Brice breathes out. “At last”, the 62-year-old New Zealander, head of the expedition operator Himalayan Experience, replies to my question on what he thinks about the planned new route through the Khumbu Icefall on Mount Everest. “We have been asking the SPCC (Note: The Sagarmatha Pollution Control Comitee is responsible for the route through the icefall.) to put the route more central since 2012. Now at last they have listened to the foreign operators instead of the local Sherpas who asked for the route to be moved so as they could travel faster … but not so safely.” Brice doesn’t expect that the new route will take the clients as much time as SPCC president Ang Dorjee Sherpa estimates: “It will take only about one hour longer, not three to four hours. You see there are not many people around these days who have been this way. But I have.”

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