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Comment by vunderba | Hacker News Reader

I read somewhere that the fact that it's become kind of a "tourist attraction" with far more first time climbers has actually made it more dangerous:

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/eve...

Really takes the mystery and wonder out of it, but maybe the Nepal government will sell a FastPass.

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Given the sheer amount of people going there, I would've thought they had set up multiple routes with different difficulty levels and amenities like carved out paths / stairs, bridges, and tourist shops.

But I was questioning my own assumption there and as it turns out there's "only" a few hundred people a year that try to make it to the summit, with a total of about 12.000 people that did since the 50's. That said, the surrounding national park gets 100.000 visitors per year, and 500 people a day go up to Everest Base Camp, which is already over five kilometers high up (although people can start from a town with an airport at 2804 meters high).

Yeah, I remember reading about this and the reality is, Everest is still a very extreme environment even by today’s standards. It’s very expensive and risky to fly helicopters in the thin atmosphere and weather conditions so it’s very hard to get material up and down.

What about a helicoptered with rocket assist?

It's hard to imagine just how much the height of Everest affects the feasibility of any "normal" infrastructure as a tourist spot. The air density is exceptionally thin (so thin that even helicopters cannot climb past a certain point), and the lack of oxygen is literally killing you at a cellular level the longer you're there. I can't even fathom getting building equipment up there to set anything up, and no one could man any of the infrastructure on a long term basis.

Helicopters can actually fly all the way to the top. (Or rather, one did, once.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Delsalle?wprov=sfti1#Mo...

Not as far as I know used for supplies. Yaks/Sherpas are cheaper. They do get used for rescues though.

The 'normal infrastructure' stops at about 5200m. On the Nepal side there's a guest house there where you can stay without climbing permits and the stuff get there via human porters or yaks. On the Chinese side there's a road and you can drive a car to base camp and there are some local shop/bar type stuff.

Above that in Nepal it's just tents carried by human porters. In China/Tibet there's an advanced base camp which is like a village supplied by yak but without shops/public facilities, just expedition tents.

The trek to the 5200m stuff on the Nepal side is a nice trip and cheap once you get to Kathmandu.

The native Tibetan populations have adapted biologically to the low oxygen, which is why the Sherpas are so much better than the rest of us up there.

Andean and Ethiopan populations also have separate such mutations of their own.

Academic article: https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/46/1/18/661204

Traditionally Sherpas only make up a small percentage of "native" workers and they they tend to work in more mountaineering adjacent roles (fixing ropes, etc.) which come with more prestige, money and better equipment donations from privileged clients.

Grunt work (porters, cooks, etc) is done by migrants from lowlands, on poor wages, with poor equipment and often effectively at higher risk despite not being involved in, for example, summit pushes. They do not benefit from the biological adaptations, nor noble savage mystique payday.

I'm don't think it's more dangerous. The number of people make it a bit more like a footpath with a guide rail rather than the open mountain of old.

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