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Mark Agnew

Uproar followed the Nepalese government’s decision to ban disabled climbers and solo attempts to summit Everest.
But Adrian Ballinger, an experienced Everest guide who became the 200th person to summit the world’s tallest mountain without supplemented oxygen, said the ban was all talk.
“No one applies for a solo permit,” he said. “They go through a local group as it’s cheaper.
Unless officials are at base camp checking climbers are going with a Sherpa, they won’t stop them. The same goes for disabled climbers – how will they know?”
Ballinger used to operate his expeditions from the Nepalese side of the mountain but for the past three years has been climbing from the Chinese side.

“Part of the reason is I saw massive mismanagement on the Nepal side,” Ballinger said. “This ban is in line with what I saw – one accident and there’s a knee-jerk reaction, but it’s not enforced.”
Ballinger was unsure what caused this reaction, but speculated it could have been the death of Ueli Steck, a Swiss climber who died solo on Everest in 2017.
From Everest with no oxygen to Lantau, Adrian Ballinger expects a different kind of suffering in Moontrekker ultramarathon
On all of the other “seven peaks”, the highest mountains on each continent, the respective governments employ rangers who are proficient climbers, Ballinger said.
They roam the trek to base camp, and climb on the mountain, spotting issues and removing dangerous climbers.
“So far, Nepal hasn’t had a single government official above base camp, so no rules they impose are followed,” the American said.

The Chinese side of the mountain has far better management, he said.
The government creates better camps up to Camp Two, and places its own fixed ropes by sending government employed climbers. On the Nepalese side the ropes are fixed by a collaboration of all the expeditions and Sherpas.
Seventh Hongkonger to conquer Mount Everest says he never wastes a minute
The rangers also remove or prevent unprepared climbers attempting to scale the mountain.
Ballinger’s company, Alpenglow Expeditions, requires participants to have climbed five 6,000-metre peaks and one 8,000-metre peak before attempting Everest.
“Other companies let people climb with no experience and then it’s up to the guides and Sherpas to get them out of trouble,” he said.

“The Nepalese side is a bit Wild West, where it’s easy to make money and run unsafe trips.”
Ballinger is opposed to the ban, even if it is not enforced, as thinks there is a place for disabled and solo climbers.
The good, bad and ugly sides to climbing Mount Everest
Instead, the government should be imposing climbing standards on would-be Everest summiteers that would make guiding safer.

“I think they should be focusing on how to minimise risk to those workers on the mountain, people like myself or local Sherpas,” Ballinger said.
“If someone wants to solo the mountain, like Ueli Steck, they should as long as they don’t put others in danger.”
When Ballinger operated expeditions in the early 2000s, there was only a dozen or so companies on the Nepalese side of the mountain and they policed each other, even if the government did not.

But now there is over 50, he said, and although accident rates have not changed significantly Ballinger puts it down to “ethical companies” improving with experience and dragging the average incident occurrence down.
“Both countries want Everest to have a special reputation as the sacred place that it is, and they are trying to introduce laws that do that, but at the moment, Nepal isn’t getting it right.”


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Outdoor & Extreme: Extreme Sports

No-oxygen Everest climber Adrian Ballinger says Nepal’s ban on disabled and solo attempts is nothing but hot air

Adrian Ballinger reached Everest’s summit with no-oxygen in 2017, and believes Nepal's ban on disabled climbers and solo attempts will not be enforced. Photo: Alpenglow Expeditions

In this May 18, 2013 photo released by Alpenglow Expeditions, a climber pauses on the way to the summit of Mount Everest, in the Khumbu region of the Nepal Himalayas. Nepal will slash the climbing fees for Mount Everest to attract more mountaineers to the world's highest peak, even as concerns grow about the environmental effects of thousands of climbers who already crowd the mountain during the high season. Madhusudan Burlakoti, head of Nepal's Department of Mountains, said Friday, Feb. 14, 2014 that beginning next year, it will cost $11,000 per climber to climb Everest. (AP Photo/Alpenglow Expeditions, Adrian Ballinger) MANDATORY CREDIT, EDITORIAL USE ONLY

--THE BAD-- This picture taken on May 17, 2010 shows Nepalese sherpas after retrieving two corpses of climbers that were left on the world's highest mountain during the Everest clean-up expedition at Mount Everest. A group of 20 Nepalese climbers, including some top summiteers collected 1,800 kilograms of garbage in a high-risk expedition to clean up the world's highest peak. Led by seven-time summiteer Namgyal Sherpa, the team braved thin air and below freezing temperatures to clear around two tonnes of rubbish left behind by mountaineers, that included empty oxygen cylinders and corpses. Since 1953, there have been some 300 deaths on Everest. Many bodies have been brought down, but those above 8,000 metres have generally been left to the elements -- their bodies preserved by the freezing temperatures. The priority of the sherpas had been to clear rubbish just below the summit area, but coordinator Karki said large quantities of refuse was collected from 8,000 meters and below. AFP PH

(FILES) This file photograph taken on August 13, 2015, shows Swiss climber Ueli Steck as he poses at Sigoyer, in the Hautes-Alpes department of southeastern France. Swiss climber Ueli Steck, famed for pioneering new mountaineering routes and setting speed records, was found dead on Mount Everest on April 30, 2017, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / JEAN-PIERRE CLATOT

*** ONE TIME USE ONLY *** Facebook capture of Xia Boyu, a climber at Mount Everest.

Adrian Ballinger has climbed Everest six times

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Tour guide and 200th no-oxygen summiteer says country has created a dangerous ‘Wild West’ climbing culture and should take a leaf from the Chinese side


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