Six decades after it was conquered, mountaineers complain that the summit of Mount Everest has become virtually gridlocked with climbers. How did the world's highest mountain become so congested?
In May 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood alone together at the very top of the world.
Nowadays, the same spot is rather less desolate.
Thanks to advances in mountaineering equipment and the indefatigable efforts of Sherpa guides, more climbers than ever are reaching the peak of Mount Everest - a landmark that was once believed to be impossible to surmount.
According to National Geographic, in 1990 18% of summit attempts were successful. By 2012 that figure stood at 56%.
But this has come at a cost. Critics say the summit has become as congested as a five-lane motorway during bank holiday weekend.
On a single day in 2012, no fewer than 234 climbers reached the peak. By contrast, as recently as 1983 the most successful ascents in a single day was eight, and a decade later that figure stood at 40.
This year some complained of waiting two-and-a-half hours in queues at bottlenecks on their way to the summit.
A striking photograph by German mountaineer Ralf Dujmovits - which showed a queue hundreds-long snaking its way up during 2012 - ignited a debate about whether the procession was ruining enjoyment of the ascent.
Westerners can pay anything from $10,000 (£6,600) to $100,000 (£66,000) for permits to climb the mountain and guides to accompany them, and a sizeable tourist industry has sprung up around the base - bringing with it complaints about litter and poor sanitation for miles around.
"There were just people everywhere," says Ayisha Jessa, 31, a keen climber from London who recently visited Everest's base camp. At the nearby village of Namachi, she says, "it's completely commercialised - everything is intended for the Western traveller".
For many serious climbers, all this has served to devalue Everest.
"It isn't a wilderness experience - it's a McDonald's experience," says Graham Hoyland, an experienced mountaineer and author of The Last Hours on Everest, an account of the ill-fated 1924 ascent by George Mallory and Andrew Irvine.
Advances in weather forecasting mean climbers time their attempts to the same few days each year, worsening the bottlenecks. A better understanding of altitude sickness has also helped more mountaineers ascend 8,848m (29,029ft) to the summit.
For their financial outlay, Westerners are given a plentiful supply of oxygen and, very often, a Nepalese mountain guide assigned specifically to ensure they get to the top.
The tour parties also ascend using fixed ropes, which help less accomplished climbers but are believed by many elite mountaineers to detract from the sport.
Courtesy: BBC.com
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