Helicopter starting from the airstrip Syangboche above Namche Bazaar

Time does not stand still, even in Khumbu. Two things have changed dramatically in the region around Mount Everest between my first visit in 2002 and my second last March. Firstly, the sanitary facilities – on average – have become much more modern and cleaner than 14 years ago. Secondly, the aircraft noise has increased significantly. On a clear day, helicopters are flying – as I felt, steadily – through the valley from Lukla to Namche Bazaar and also further up towards Everest Base Camp.

Cheaper than mules

“Meanwhile, a big part of material transport is done by helicopter,” Ang Dorjee Sherpa, owner of a lodge in Namche, told me. “That’s almost cheaper than the transportation by mules.” Not only material is transported, even people use helicopter transfer. When we sat on the terrace of the Everest View Hotel, above Namche Bazaar, drinking an (expensive) milk tea, we met a couple from the United States that virtually smelled of money. The two had just landed next to the hotel by helicopter along with their private pilot. “We flew over Everest Base Camp and Khumbu Icefall and afterwards even turned a round through the Gokyo valley”, both said enthusiastically. But you have not got a real feeling for these beautiful mountains, I thought.

More than 80 loads less cross the Icefall

Rescue helicopter above Khumbu Icefall (in 2014)

As the US blogger and mountaineer Alan Arnette – he wants to climb Lhotse this spring – reported from Everest Base Camp, the Nepalese government has allowed for the first time to fly climbing equipment by helicopter up to Camp 1 at about 6,000 meters: ropes, anchors and bottled oxygen. All in all, says Alan, it is more than 80 loads that have not to be carried by Sherpas through the Khumbu Icefall. Although it is a contribution to safety, the helicopter transport flights to high camp also mean another step of commercialization of Mount Everest.

Many cracks and deep holes

Even after the huge avalanche which had been triggered on the seven-thousander Pumori by the earthquake on 25 April 2015, had hit the Everest Base Camp and killed 19 people, the Nepalese government had agreed to material transport by helicopter to Camp 1. However, it had not happened, because the season had ended prematurely, as already in 2014 after the avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall with 16 dead Nepalese climbers.

The Icefall Doctors speak of very difficult conditions this spring, after the earthquake that hit Nepal on Monday exactly one year ago. “I have never seen so many cracks and deep holes on the path to the summit of Sagarmatha,” said Ang Kami Sherpa, head of the specialists who prepare and secure the route through the Icefall and further up. “It’s dangerous this year.” By their own account, the government has issued 289 Everest permits for foreign climbers this season. Many of them use their permits from 2014 or 2015, the validity of which had been extended by five respectively two years.

Jamling Tenzing Norgay

I owe Jamling Tenzing Norgay my first experiences in the Himalayas. I met the son of the first man who made it to the top of Everest in 2001 when he presented his book “Touching My Father’s Soul” in Germany. In 1996, Jamling had followed in his father’s footsteps by reaching himself the summit of the highest mountain on earth. Norgay’s book was the first to discuss from the Sherpas’ point of view the May 1996 disaster on Everest, in which twelve climbers had died, most of them clients of commercial expeditions. At the end of our meeting in Munich, Jamling said: “If you want to come to Nepal someday, contact me! Then I’ll help you to organize the trip.” He kept his word. In 2002, the International Year of the Mountains, I trekked to the base camp on the Nepalese side of Everest. Today Jamling Tenzing Norgay is a sought-after speaker. I asked the 48-year-old what he expects of this year’s climbing on Mount Everest.

Jamling, we are at the start of spring season on Everest. Do you think it will be business as usual in Nepal or something different due to last year’s events?

I think that business will be as usual, everything will run the same way as it has been in the past years. My fear is that there will be more people this year due to the back log of climbers from last year and new climbers on the mountain this year. The only difference from last year is that the Sherpas will get better insurance coverage and hopefully the commercial outfitters and the local agents will have raised the pay scale of the Sherpas for this spring.

Jamling (l.) and Peter Hillary, son of Edmund Hillary (in 2013)

Do you feel that the mood among the members of the Sherpa community in Nepal has changed after last year’s avalanche incident and the subsequent premature end of the season?

We Sherpas are very happy and content people. Of course we mourn the loss of our Sherpa brothers who perish while climbing mountains but we continue to do what we do best and that is to climb. This is the risk that we take in our line of work.

What do think about the attitude of the operators? Have they learned from the events in 2014 or was there no need for them to change anything?

I feel that the accident in 2014 should have been a good lesson for the commercial outfitters and the local operators. The most important thing that anyone wants in life is security. We need to have a better life insurance policy for the Sherpa climbers and the pay needs to be raised.

Most importantly the children and the families need to be secure in the time of any unforeseen circumstances to the climbers. The Government of Nepal should put aside a certain percentage of the royalties collected from mountaineering expeditions into a trust to help with education of children and the families of the Sherpas that have died on the mountains.

What would your father say if he would still be alive and see what happens on Everest?

I think that he would be shocked to see how it has become so commercialized and that nowadays Everest has become a playground for the overnight mountaineers.

Russell Brice

The decision of the Nepalese Government to extend last year’s Everest permits until 2019 came late, very late. “The Everest season starts in a few days, my staff are already on their way to Base Camp, so our planning has been going on for months”, Russell Brice, head of the New Zealand expedition operator Himalayan Experience, writes to me. “Food, oxygen and equipment are already in the Khumbu and members will be arriving in Kathmandu as from Monday next week.” He has some members that were at Everest last year coming back this year, says Russ. There is no sign of euphoria in his words about the decision to prolong the permits. “For the Nepalese government to take so long in making this decision is detrimental to Nepalese tourist business and devastating to employment opportunities for local people and the local economy.” It is unacceptable, says Brice, “that operators like us take the risk and continue with our planning, at huge financial risk.”

Small paper

The 62-year-old New Zealander has been leading expeditions to the Himalayas since 1974. Due to his strong experience, in a way Brice is something like the voice of the foreign expedition operators. He obviously doesn’t believe any more in the competence of the responsible persons in Kathmandu: “From a government that cannot rewrite the National Constitution for Nepal after nine years, what does one expect? So we are lucky that they could ‘push’ through a small paper in one year.”