Swarming to Qomolangma

"Because it's there."

When asked in 1923 why he wanted to climb Qomolangma, known in the West as Mount Everest, this is said to have been George Mallory's answer.

Ninety years later however - 60 since Sir Edmund Hillary made the first successful summit - Qomolangma is not what it once was.

As the availability of skilled Sherpa guides has increased, so too have tourist expeditions to the top, but this increased commercialization has come at a cost far beyond the 300,000 yuan ($49,008) paid, on average, by each climber. Hordes of inexperienced climbers have left trails of trash, environmental destruction and even corpses upon the world's tallest peak.

According to a report in the UK-based Independent, 120 corpses of mountaineers remain unrecovered on the peak.

Whilst 2013 has been a reasonably safe year thus far for climbers, 2012 marked a nasty year with 10 left dead, according to a report in the Toronto Star. As the climbing industry booms, particularly on the Nepalese side of the border where restrictions on climbers are less strict, many are asking what this means for the future of tourism on the mountain.

No longer exclusive

Despite being the world's highest mountain, Qomolangma is no longer a venture exclusive to experienced mountaineers. Commercial guide agencies have multiplied in number, offering tourists the chance to ascend the summit.

By the end of the 2010 climbing season, more than 3,000 people had climbed to the peak of Qomolangma, with 77 percent of these ascents being accomplished since 2000.

Climbing Qomolangma from the Southeast ridge in Nepal is much more popular than climbing along the routes from China, as Nepal has more diverse trekking agencies and lower prices for climbers. There are also varying standards in terms of required experience on either side of the border.

A mountaineer with experience in Nepal told the Global Times that climbing Qomolangma in Nepal doesn't require any previous mountaineering experience, while in China the climbers must have had the experience of climbing peaks of 5,000 meters and finally up to 8,000 meters.

Sula Wangping, the head of a professional team of mountain guides that offers guide services to climbers heading to Tibet or Sichuan Province, said that climbing, as a tourist industry, has developed well in Nepal, with a number of trekking agencies providing various services under fierce competition.

However, the increased number of climbers on the mountain has raised questions not just relating to safety, but also whether climbing the mountain is the feat it once was.

A mountaineer surnamed Huang from Hunan Province told the Global Times that he believed Qomolangma's increased accessibility represented a triumph of technology.

"Without the services of commercial guide teams who build the ladders and ropes along the routes, the number of climbers reaching the summit would be much smaller," he said. "But it's a setback in terms of humans really challenging their limits."

But Huang's bigger fear is that making a previously extreme challenge easier for ordinary people inevitably poses both environmental and safety problems.