North side of Everest in the last daylight

“It was a good season,” Nishma Khadgi writes to me. She is responsible for marketing at Asian Trekking, the leading expedition operator in Nepal. “Things are largely normalized and morale of climbers and sherpas are positive which make us optimistic for the future seasons.” According to the Nepalese Tourism Ministry, this spring 456 climbers reached the summit of Mount Everest from the south side of the mountain, 199 were climbers from abroad. The official figures from the north side are still not available.

Nepalese Mingma Gyalje Sherpa and Swiss Kari Kobler are two other expedition leaders who have responded to my request to tell me their personal record of this spring’s Everest season. Mingma was on the south side, Kari on the north side. Both are now staying in Pakistan, where they lead expeditions to K 2, the second highest mountain on Earth. And they have another thing in common: Both expedition leaders scaled themselves Mount Everest in May.

Mingma Gyalje Sherpa: “No traffic jams”

Mingma Gyalje Sherpa

Mingma Gyalje Sherpa is the head of Dreamers Destination, an operator for expedition and trekking, based in Kathmandu. The 30-year-old has climbed seven eight-thousanders and made headlines with his solo ascent in the West Face of the 6685-meter-high Chobutse in fall 2015. This is his record of Everest spring season:

“This year Everest was great. I made my 5th time on summit, and I think this year was the easiest summit. It snowed a lot in the beginning that covered all the rock and ice. The most popular rock spots like the Yellow band, Rock Band, Juniper Spur, Triangular Face and Lhotse face were covered by snow which made it very easy to walk and climb.

The Sherpa team fixed the rope at an early date. Previously more summit bids used to be after 15 May, but this year many teams summited before that date. That decreased the traffic jam. In addition, there was no giant rock on Hillary Step as it was covered by snow. So it was comparatively easier and there was no jam at all.

As the government of Nepal extended the permits of 2015 for 2016 and 2017, it didn’t affect the number of climbers on 8000m mountains. I had a team of eight members, four on Everest and four on Lhotse, with 1:1 respective Sherpa. Obviously it was not good luck on Lhotse with no summit at all. Three of my clients made successful Everest summit on 20 May, and there were very few people on that day. The teams chose different summit dates starting from 13 to 22 May. Thanks to fixing the route early, this ran very smoothly.” 

Kobler: “All on the same day, horror!”

Kari Kobler (l.) with his team

Kari Kobler stood on top of Mount Everest for the sixth time. Along with the 61-year-old head of the expedition operator Kobler & Partner, six of his Sherpas and two clients reached the highest point on 8850 meters, including German Stefan Sieveking (born 1946), “presumably the oldest German on the summit of Mount Everest”, as Kari writes. The Swiss has encouraged me to help myself with a cutout of his summary at the K&P website. Here it is:

“After the installation of the fixed ropes from 10 until 13 May had not worked, Sumdjock (of the Tibet Himalaya Expedition Company that employed the rope-fixing team), suddenly informed everyone, that the weather on 19 May would be perfect for going to the summit. Suddenly the mood became very hectic in the Base Camp and ABC (Advanced Base Camp)! The Chinese, Russians, Japanese and Indians all wanted to summit on the same day; the horror, the horror! Several cases of frostbite, snow blindness and other minor ailments resulted from reckless behavior. However, this year there have not been any serious injuries and no casualties on the north side of Mount Everest!

We held off on our summit push. It was not an easy decision. Yet, experience taught me, that sometimes being a little patient is the best thing to do. The waiting was worth it, because 23 May was the best summit on Everest in 2016. The ascent was just perfect. It had snowed the previous night, which meant that the rock ledges, which have to be traversed and which are somewhat difficult, were perfectly covered in snow. I had the privilege to make a new trail to the summit which of course made me very happy. On the summit I stood alone with Pemba and so I could truly enjoy the simply astounding view.”

Dawa Gyaljen Sherpa

He is one of the Sherpas who stay well clear of Mount Everest this year. “I simply haven’t got the time,” says Dawa Sherpa Gyaljen, when I meet him in a cafe in Kathmandu during my visit Nepal. The 29-year-old is working for a trekking operator. “Maybe I’ll get the chance in 2017 again. I have been asked if I would lead an Everest team next year. Let’s see whether I can take as much vacation.” The Sherpa, who was born in the Khumbu region in a small village west of Namche Bazaar, has reached the highest point on earth already four times: in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009. The upcoming spring season could set the course for the future, Dawa believes.

Used to aftershocks

“If also this year accidents happen like in 2014 or last year, maybe people get scared,” Dawa expects. “But if the expeditions are successful, the number of climbers for sure will go up in 2017 and 2018.” Dawa says, that he is happy, that many foreigners are willing to travel to Nepal again to boost the economy of the country that was hit so hard by the earthquake. In his own words, Dawa is now hardly thinking about the earthquake on 25 April 2015, not least because of the more than 400 aftershocks measuring 4.0 or more: “Sometimes I don`t even feel earthquakes of 4.5 or 5 because I got used to. It’s a bit normal for me now. We survived a very dangerous situation, now I feel safe. But there are still rumors that a bigger quake will come again.”

Impossible to forget

Rescue helicopter above Khumbu Icefall (in 2014)

Sherpas are determined to make this year’s Everest season a successful one. “Finally, it is also about protecting their jobs in the future,” says Dawa Gyaljen. “It’ not actually pressure, but a kind of challenge. I think they will push hard to get to the summit this year.” In spring 2014, the young Sherpa was among the first who reached the accident site in the Khumbu Icefall after the avalanche and who started the recovery of the injured and dead. 16 Nepali climbers were killed, three of them remained missing. I ask Dawa if he could climb through the icefall easily after that experience. “I think you cannot escape this. When we pass this place, we even feel like that there is some blood or somebody is still in the crevasse.”

Better trained

Dawa on Lobuche Peak

Dawa Gyaljen finds that Everest aspirants of today on average are better climbers than those in past years. “There are only a few who still don’t know how to put on their crampons,” says the 29-year-old, adding that also the Sherpas are now much better trained because they went through the practical trainings offered by the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) twice a year. The Sherpas are always responsible for their clients, says Dawa: “If some bad thing happens, the Sherpas are blamed for it because they didn’t take care of their clients. There are rumors about unskilled Sherpas who abandoned their clients half way on the mountain.” However, the trained and skilled Sherpa guides never left their clients alone, says Dawa: “But if the clients insist on climbing further up against the advice of their Sherpas, then they have to bear the responsibility for their own.”

Dawa Steven Sherpa

A 15-meter-high climbing wall in the middle of the tourist quarter Thamel in Kathmandu – who would have thought it? “The wall is the nursery for the sport of climbing in Nepal”, Dawa Steven Sherpa tells me. “All of the young ambitious Sherpa climbers have trained here.” I meet the 32-year-old in the office of “Asian Trekking”. Along with his father Ang Tshering Sherpa, Dawa Steven is managing the leading Nepalese expedition operator. I talk with him about this spring season on Everest – after the avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall in 2014 that killed 16 Nepalese climberes and the earthquake in 2015, that triggered an avalanche from the 7000er Pumori that hit Everest Base Camp killing 19 climbers.

Dawa Steven, Asian Trekking once again offers an Eco Everest Expedition this spring. Will it take place?

Yes, it will start from Kathmandu on 6 April. So far we have 14 foreign members and 21 Sherpas but this number will change by the end of the month.

Do you notice that there is a lower demand this year?

There is not a lower demand for Everest, but it’s the same people from 2015 and 2014 who are coming back. So the big question is: Will there be the same size of expeditions not this but next year?

Everest Southwest Face

We had two years with avalanche accidents and without summit successes from the South. What do you expect for this spring’s season?

It’s not possible to predict natural disasters. But from the mentality and the motivation, the climbers and the Sherpas as well as the operators feel that this has to be a good year, no matter what we have to get this done because three years in a row might cause permanent damage to the tourism industry, to the reputation of Everest and as a result also to the local and national economy. So the mentality is very much of determination that, whatever the case is this year, expeditions have to be successful. There is a lot of pressure on everybody this year.

Dawa Steven Sherpa: A lot of pressure this year

In the sense that it will decide about the future of climbing Everest from the Nepalese side?

I think already a lot of clients who have been in Nepal in the last two years decided that China will be safer for them. Many people feel that the north side has fewer dangers than the south side. But this is just an opinion. The Chinese side has its own challenges, for example more exposure to high altitude.

The government has extended the validity of the 2015 permits by two years. The decision came rather late – as usual?

As usual. There is no surprise there. In 2014, we were really concerned and stressed because the government took such an amount of time to make their decision on the Everest permits. This year we had this experience of 2014. I said to my clients: Don’t worry, the Nepalese government always does things at the last minute. It’s unlike in Europe or America. Things are not done in a timely way, they are only done if they have to be done.

What’s about the announced new rules for Everest climbing like age limits, no more permits for heavily disabled climbers and so on. When will they come?

They will not come, at least not now. I think it’s important to have criteria, selection processes for who should be on the mountain, not only for climbers, but also for operators, guides and Sherpas so that the mountain is climbed in a safe way. But these rules you mention, that was only a statement of the Tourism Minister in a public event, it had no legal backing, there was no documentation and a follow up on that. But the media picked it up and it did a lot of damage to Nepal’s reputation as a destination for climbers.

Dawa Steven Sherpa about new rules on Everest

In my personal opinion, it’s a wrong criterion to say that a disabled person is not allowed to climb. I think it is discrimination. I know many disabled climbers who are better climbers than I am. And there is again discrimination from an age perspective. Age is not a factor. You should not make minors climb, I understand that. Children should not be in a dangerous environment. But it’s wrong to say that a 60, 70 or 80-year-old is not capable, because it’s not up to us. There are people who are in their sixties who are fitter than I am. As long as a doctor says, this person is fine to go to the mountain, that should be a good legal basis for allowing him to climb.

But the Nepal Mountaineering Association is also demanding stricter rules for Everest. Do you think that it’s important to regulate it because maybe the wrong people are on the mountain?

There is definitely a need to regulate who goes to the mountain but at the same time we have to be very careful because it is an economic activity, many people depend on it for jobs. So to make it safer, the focus is always on the climbers. There should be better climbers. But in my personal experience I have also noticed that it is normally not the amateur but the expert climbers who get in trouble. They don’t know the mountain themselves, many of them are climbers from the Alps and the Andes, but don’t really know high altitude. They go with cheap companies and don’t take good Sherpa support. Unlike a rock climb or a small peak, Everest is an expedition. It needs skills from different backgrounds, in logistics, in guiding, in climbing of course. It has to be a combination of these skills that has to be good.

Much traffic on Everest (in 2012)

But amateur climbers are often very slow and responsible for traffic jams on the key points of the route.

Amateur climbers can be slow but so can expert climbers, because it’s not the technical difficulty of Everest that makes people slow, it’s the altitude. You could be a fantastic rock climber or a fantastic mountaineer in the Alps in Switzerland, but the moment you hit 8,000 meters your body doesn’t work in the same way. So to say that amateur climbers are the ones who slow people down is not necessarily true. But of course the logic is that if you are not technically skilled and you are affected by altitude you are definitely going to slow people down.

The second point is management on the mountain. Traffic jams happen when too many people are at the same place at the same time. That is because of bad management from the government side and bad coordination between the different teams. First we have to look to the weather reports. How many weather windows are we going to have in May, maybe five, four, maybe two. So people can split up accordingly. The second thing is: Weather windows last for two to sometimes five days. So people don’t have to go on the same day but can do it one day apart. It can be managed in that way. On a good summer day there are more people on Mont Blanc than on Everest in an entire year. There will be a point where we have to say that’s too many people. But in my opinion we haven’t reached that point. Let’s first manage these people there and the summits, then let’s talk about having quotas and so on.

Everest Base Camp

There were some western operators telling that they won’t offer Everest expeditions any more due to the competition with Nepalese operators that has turned into some kind of price war. Can you understand them?

Absolutely. But it’s not only competition from the Nepali but also from international operators. There are a lot of Nepali operators who are offering it much cheaper. In the past it used to be that Nepali companies did not have the skills to organize and lead expeditions. Now we do. Now we have Nepali climbers who are internationally certified guides. There are companies who are very capable, have the same infrastructure, assets and manpower as the western companies. Yet being local, their overheads are less and so they are able to offer a cheaper price. So the western operators are losing their clients who are looking for price to those companies. At the same time there are a lot of foreign climbers who get a lot of satisfaction and peace of mind by going with a company of their own country. In those cases, people are less concerned about prize and will then look for international operators who are more expensive but have a better reputation. So what you will see is that international operators who are sort of in the middle are losing out their cheap clients to the Nepali companies and the expensive clients to the more expensive international companies. That’s why they are not able to compete now.

Would you say that a new era is coming where only the Nepalese operators will manage expeditions on Everest?

There is a new era of Nepali operators coming, yes, but there is still a niche for the international competitors and only the best of them will survive. Eventually Nepali operators will overtake the western companies because they are getting better every year. It could be in the next five years or ten years. But it’s not to say that international operators are not important. What we see is that western companies who used to organize the expeditions themselves in Nepal are now sending their clients to Nepali operators. They do the marketing and the Nepali companies do the operations. Business keeps changing. If you can’t adept, you are not going to survive.

Dawa Steven Sherpa: New era of operating expedition

Some experts expect that there will be only high end expeditions on the one hand and discount expeditions on the other hand and nothing in between. Do you share this opinion?

I don’t think so. Everything is on a spectrum. When a professional climber comes to us and says, I only need one cook and a tent in Base Camp, everything else I will do myself, then I will organize this expedition accordingly. If I have a lawyer from Hongkong who has a lot of money to spend and he wants three Sherpas and everything to be done for him and he doesn’t want to carry a backpack, I also have a market for that. But most people fall in between. I think there will always be a spectrum. In the past, it used to be that Nepalese were at the bottom providing the cheapest expeditions. And in the middle and at the top were the western operators. Now the bottom and the middleground are taken by the Nepalese, and only the more expensive is provided by the Westerners. It’s only a matter of time before the Nepalese also take over the western operators’ market share.

What do you think about these luxury expeditions: Acclimatizing in oxygen tents in lower regions, flying by helicopter to Base Camp, only food from western countries, one client, one Sherpa and so on? Can you live with this kind of expeditions?

Absolutely. I think there is a place for everyone. When we talk about climbing philosophy, the big problem is that we are looking at it from a western perspective where climbing is a leisure, a philosophical exercise. People talk about the right and the wrong way to do climbing. But in Nepal climbing is an economic activity. Every climber provides jobs for Sherpas, cooks, porters, farmers. So it’s a completely different way that we see climbing. Why would Nepal want to sell mountaineering to foreigners if it is not going to benefit from it? So you have to be very careful. Sherpas are very quickly going to say: If we don’t get jobs on the mountain, why should these foreigners come here and climb on our holy mountains? When a westerner says, this is against the philosophy of mountaineering, it’s against the western philosophy, but is it also against the Nepali philosophy? Nobody ever asks that.  

Dawa Steven Sherpa: Different kinds of climbing philosophies

Much in demand: firewood for cooking and heating

If there is a season, which stands for optimism, it’s spring: Winter is leaving, it’s getting warmer, brighter, more colorful. This may entice people painting the world more beautiful than it is soberly assessed. Also the people in Nepal long for spring, in the hope of better times. 2015 was a bad year for the country. First the devastating earthquake in spring that killed according to official figures more than 8800 people. And were this not bad enough, the blockade of the border to India, now continuing for almost four months. There is still no sign of spring fever in Nepal.

Ambivalent feeling

Fuel, food and medicine are still scarce because the imports from India have been staying away. The blockade holds the reconstruction in the earthquake hit regions up. Tourism is affected too. The conditions for operators of trekking and expeditions in Nepal are far from ideal. His agency was still able to obtain fuel, ensure flights and organize food, “of course often on the black market”, Manfred Haeupl, head of the German operator Hauser Exkursionen writes to me, adding that he has an “ambivalent feeling, because we want and should send tourists, while on the other hand the locals are suffering”.

Double standards

“The booking situation is far from having recovered”, Haeupl says. “We are currently still about 30 percent below the number of bookings in 2015. The NTB [Nepal Tourism Board] does nothing to boost tourism, but has now increased the entry fees.” In contrast, the Nepalese government waives visa fees for visitors from China since the beginning of the year. Perhaps the authorities in Kathmandu should think about such a gesture to Western tourists too.

Less bookings, but uptrend

Limited sale of gas bottles

Other large German operators as the DAV Summit Club and Amical Alpin note a similar decline in bookings for trips to Nepal as Hauser does. “Compared to 2015, we have currently 26 percent less bookings for next spring “, Markus Herrmann, product manager of DAV Summit Club, writes to me. However, his company is now recording an increasing demand for Nepal traveling. “Things are once again looking up”, says Herrmann.

Via Kathmandu or Lhasa?

Dominik Mueller, head of Amical alpin, is cautiously optimistic too. Their scheduled spring expedition to the eight-thousander Makalu in Nepal is “already well booked and thus secured”, says Mueller. However, he refers to uncertainties before the upcoming season: “For us as expedition operators it’s still an open question whether China will open the border with Tibet for expeditions, so that we can organize our equipment material and also our arrival via Nepal. Of course, an arrival via Lhasa is possible too but means significantly higher costs.”

The great silence

Whereas the 2015 earthquake in Nepal made headlines around the world for weeks, hardly anyone seems to be interested in the conflict in the Nepal-India border region. The ethnic group of Madhesis, who live in the border area, initiated the blockade to protest against the new constitution of Nepal, through which they feel discriminated. The government in Kathmandu accuses India of actively supporting the blockade, the authorities in New Delhi dispute this.
At the end of November, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, he was “alarmed by reports of the obstruction, and destruction, of life-saving medical supplies and continued impact on humanitarian operations” in Nepal, urging all sides to resolve their differences. Ban underlined Nepal’s right of free transit.
I didn’t find any statement of a Western government on the conflict. My questions to the German Foreign Ministry, what they think of the problem and whether they have already contacted India on this issue or intend to do so, are still unanswered.