Climbing Mount Everest used to mean forging one of the toughest summits in the world-braving the elements, working with small groups of experienced Sherpas and fellow mountain enthusiasts, feeling the snow crunching beneath heavy boots.
Now, it just means you might have to wait in a line for up to two hours, crammed behind scores of folks clamoring to touch the top of the mountain.
In the June issue of National Geographic, a photo depicting such a scene shows a climber traffic jam at the Hillary Step, a 40 ft. rock face that stands, almost vertically, in front of the final step to the summit.
Some of the climbers there waited almost two hours for their turn to continue up the mountain, in an overcrowding phenomenon that, some say, can be deadly.
A handful of the climbers, clad in bright colors as they stood in a line snaking down the length of Hillary Step, claimed that the excessive amount of people stopping up the flow of traffic are using up oxygen supplies in what is called the "death zone"-where oxygen in the atmosphere thins out. According to The Telegraph, some also have said that standing stagnantly in line causes people to lose body heat-yet another dangerous aspect of the already precarious overcrowding.
Sir Chris Bonington, who was the leader of four expeditions up Mount Everest during the 1970s and 80s, said that the difference between the summit now compared to back then is the "sheer number" of people on the mountain.
"It's just a conveyor belt to the top. I suspect it is completely out of control," he told The Telegraph. "There are accidents waiting to happen and it also creates extraordinary behavior where people will just walk past climbers who are in trouble. They are so intent on getting to the top that they don't care. The whole thing needs to be much better regulated. There is huge pressure on the mountain."
Many worry that this will turn Mount Everest into a symbol of human intrusion rather than one of endurance, especially given a brawl that broke out last month, when two famous climbers got into an all-out fist fight with Nepalese Sherpas.
They have since made up, documenting in writing that the argument was out of line on both sides.
Tomorrow marks the 60 anniversary of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's first summit of Mount Everest, during a simpler time: when the climb was just about the climb.
