Tragic Death of Shriya Shah-Klorfine to climbing Everest Without Arms, presenter Steve Chao retraces Sir Hillary’s footsteps to Everest Base Camp discovering that banking on the desire to scale the world’s tallest mountain local and foreign mountaineering operators are cashing in on the job.

Participants are made to sign an indemnity form and pay up tens of thousands of dollars for an experience of a lifetime. It is not just money they are handing over, but also their lives.

Up in the mountains, expedition leaders make all the calls, leaders like Russell Brice. Brice runs the Himalayan Experience and has been guiding expeditions to the Himalayas since 1974. Nicknamed the “King of the Mountain”, Brice shows how camping in the wilderness can be done in style.

But when it is time to summit, Brice commands his team like an army officer. The weather on top of Everest changes within hours, meaning mountaineers can get lost when visibility decreases and severe storms ravage the top. A wrong forecast by Brice can spell danger for his team. The window of opportunity to scale Everest is tiny and last year, Brice abandoned their summit plan.

The increasing demand for Everest expedition trips has also created a boom in trekking business, drawing climbers with no prior experience

Eleven climbers died in 2012, making it the second deadliest year in Everest’s history. One of the climbers was Shriya Shah-Klorfine, a 33-year-old Nepali-Canadian businesswomen. Her husband Bruce Klorfine says it had always been her dream to climb Everest but she was unprepared for it. She went with Utmost Adventure Trekking Company and reports claim that she was with inexperienced sherpas, an ethnic group from Nepal's most mountainous region, high in the Himalayas.

We put these claims to the manager of Utmost Adventure Trekking Company.

Another danger on Everest is called “Summit day crowding” - with hundreds of climbers flocking to Everest each year armed with limited oxygen supply, a traffic jam is formed and climbers can only count down to the last of their oxygen supply. We speak to Nepal’s tourism minister to ask if there should be better regulation for issuing permits.

On this episode of 101 East, celebrate the victories but ask if the growing tourism is putting lives at risk.

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Cir: 2013

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