North side of Everest

Will the mountaineers on the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest be chauffeured to the base camp next spring with electric buggies, as we know them from golf courses? This Tibetan provincial government’s plan is reported by Chinese state media. Step by step, all vehicles without electric motors should be banned from the base camp in order to reduce air pollution, it said. “In peak season, the camp welcomes an average of 200 to 400 vehicles every day,” said Tang Wu, director of Tibet’s Tourism Development Commission. “The camp receives an average of 20,000 vehicles every year.”

More than 100,000 visitors per year

The Chinese Base Camp, which can be reached on a paved road, has increasingly developed into a tourist attraction.  According to the state news agency Xinhua, in 2017 more than 100,000 people visited the starting point for Everest expeditions on the north side of the mountain. It is obvious that so many people produce a lot of garbage. The provincial government has commissioned a company to keep the area between the Chinese Base Camp at 5,200 meters and the Advance Base Camp at 6500 meters clean.

Special bonus for the transport of faeces

Garbage cans in Everest Base Camp

After the last spring season, 8.5 metric tonnes of waste were collected according to official data. It was said that it was particularly difficult to remove the faeces: The locals did not want to pack the human waste on their yaks because they thought it would bring bad luck. Only after special payments did some people agree to take the faeces away.

No more news about the planned mountaineering centre

Whether the plan with the electric cars will really be implemented remains to be seen. Almost two years ago, the news had gone around the world that by 2019 an Everest mountaineering centre, the size of twelve football pitches, was to be built in Gangkar, also known as Old Tingri, with accommodation and restaurants for mountaineers, a helicopter rescue base, offices for expedition operators, repair shops for cars, motorcycles and bicycles as well as a mountaineering museum.  After that you didn’t hear anything more about it.

Rescue flights also on the north side of Everest?

Rescue helicopters from Nepal at the foot of Shishapangma

However, there are persistent rumors that from 2019 there will also be helicopter rescue flights on the Tibetan north side of Everest. Last spring, Chinese rescue forces and Nepalese helicopter pilots worked together to find Bulgarian climber Boyan Petrov, who has been missing on the eight-thousander Shishapangma in Tibet. Unfortunately, the search was unsuccessful in the end, but the rescue operation could serve as a model for the highest of all mountains.

Tibetan North side of Mount Everest

Climbing on an eight-thousander in Tibet is getting more expensive, not only on Mount Everest. According to documents available to me, the Chinese Mountaineering Association (CMA) has significantly increased the prices for the climbing permits on Everest, Cho Oyu and Shishapangma, on average by more than 30 percent. Since the beginning of the year, the CMA claims 9,950 US dollars per mountaineer for the climb of the highest mountain on earth in case of four or more team members. So far the Everest Permit cost about 7,000 dollars per head. 7,400 dollars are now due for Cho Oyu, 7,150 dollar for climbing Shishapangma from the north side and 7,650 dollars for an ascent from the south side of the mountain. For smaller teams of up to three, the permit costs are even in a five-digit range: 19,500 dollars per person on Everest, 12,600 dollars each on Cho Oyu and Shishapangma.

Prices converge

For comparison: The Nepalese government requires 11,000 dollars for Everest in spring and  1,800 dollars for the other eight-thousanders in the country. However, this is the “naked” permit, while in Tibet some services are included, such as transportation to the base camp or the services of the liasion officer. Nevertheless, slowly but surely the expedition prices in China and Nepal are converging.

Market of the future

China has obviously discovered mountaineering as a growth sector. No wonder, after all more and more Chinese buy into commercial expeditions – not only in the local mountains, where they are forbidden to travel with foreign agencies. “China is the future market,” Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, head of the Nepalese operator “Dreamers Destination”, writes to me. “The Chinese have now started travelling and climbing in foreign countries.”

By train to base camp

Construction work along the road to Cho Oyu

The Chinese authorities are investing massively in infrastructure in Tibet. The road from the capital Lhasa to the 5,200 meter high Everest Base Camp – formerly on many sections only a dirty road  – has meanwhile been paved completely. “As a tourist attraction, it’s one of the coolest roads I’ve seen anywhere on the planet,” the US expedition operator Adrian Ballinger enthused in spring 2016.
In the town of Gangkar, also known as Old Tingri, a huge mountaineering center is to be built by 2019, including a landing site for helicopter rescue flights. In Tingri, also an incineration plant is currently being built, the Swiss expedition operator Kari Kobler writes to me. Within three to four years there should be a railway connection close to Shishapangma Base Camp, Kari adds.

Unpredictable policy

North side of Everest in the last daylight

The 61-year-old is an old hand on the Tibetan side of the Himalayas. Kobler has been organizing expeditions there for many years. Kari believes that the big changes will take place only in the coming years. “Up to now Everest has been very quiet, and we had an almost familiar relationship on the north side,” says Kobler, referring to the lower number of peak climbers, “only about 30 percent of the guests on the south side”. However, corruption is still a big problem, says Kari: “It’s incredible how autonomously Chinese politicians are operating in Tibet.” Shouldn’t the Tibetans be autonomous in China, according to the official version of the government in Beijing?
Despite higher prices and political uncertainties, Kobler does not think about switching to the Nepali side. The objective dangers are larger on the south side of Mount Everest, says Kari: “From my point of view, it is only a matter of time before something bad happens again. That’s why I prefer the unpredictable policy to of unpredictable dangers.”

Tibetan North side of Mount Everest

Twelve footfall pitches. That’s the size of the new mountaineering center, which the Chinese want to build on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest. According to the state newspaper “China Daily” the giant complex in the town of Gangkar, also known as Old Tingri, by the year 2019 is to be completed in 2019. The site is located about 60 kilometers northwest of Everest, on the travel route of expeditions that head to the highest mountain on earth.  According to the “China Daily”, the mountaineering center will cost more than 100 million yuan (13.7 million euros). Accomodation and restaurants for mountaineers are planned, furthermore a helicopter rescue base, offices for expedition operators, repair shops for cars, motorcycles and bicycles as well as a mountaineering museum. The mountaineering scene is discussing the project on social media. Some see no less than the downfall of adventure on Everest.  The Everest north side “will turn into a Chinese Disneyland,” says one. Another believes that a chair lift to the summit is only a matter of time. Dominik Mueller, head of German expedition operator Amical Alpin, doesn’t see why there should be outrage.

Dominik Mueller: “More security”

Dominik Mueller

“There are many people discussing who don’t know the situation on the north side,” writes Dominik to me. In the so-called “Chinese Base Camp”, there are only a few teahouses and “a completely dilapidated house, in which the local liasion people and officers have to live.” The question of security is even more important than infrastructure, says Mueller, adding that there is not yet any mountain rescue on the north side. Since helicopter rescue flights are forbidden, all accident victims and climbers suffering from high altitude sickness have to be treated by the expedition doctors in tents and then evacuated from Base Camp by jeep. “When this mountaineering center is built at lower altitude than Base Camp, at last there will be the possibility to transport climbers who suffer from high altitude sickness, injured and other sick people quickly from Base Camp to lower region and treat them in appropriate rooms,” writes Dominik. “The bottom line is that this will improve the quality and, above all, increase the security. Therefore I welcome the project.”
Similarly, Adrian Ballinger, head of US operator Alpenglow Expeditions, commented via Instagram a few weeks ago: “It is still nice to know there is rapid evacuation when the unexpected occurs. It’s also another real step in the Chinese/Tibetan commitment to the mountain and the importance of well managed climbing. Stoked!” Since 2015, Ballinger has been offering only Everest expeditions on the Tibetan north side of the mountain.

Top seller Everest

Commercial mountaineering has become popular in China by now. Large expedition groups from the “Middle Kingdom” are seen on the eight-thousander in Tibet – last September Billi Bierling told me about a Tibetan-Chinese expedition on Cho Oyu with about 150 (!) members – as well as on the highest mountains of Nepal. The leaders in China have recognized that mountain tourism and mountain sports make money, especially, of course, on the highest of all mountains. Mount Everest – like all prestige mountains around the world – sells well, not just in the west, and not just to climbers. As early as 2005, I saw Chinese tourists with breathing masks, who were taken by horse-drawn carriages from Rongbuk Monastery to Chinese Base Camp. “You can not turn the wheel back,” believes Dominik Mueller, head of Amical. “In the future there will be even more day trippers due to the good and easy accessibility of the Base Camp.” The question remains whether a mountaineering center near Everest must really have the size of twelve football pitches.