Well, climbing Mount Everest ain't what it used to be. Sixty years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Sir George's mountain, there are so many people waiting in line to reach the top that there's now a plan to install a ladder there:
"We are now discussing putting a ladder on the Hillary Step but it is obviously controversial," said Dawa Steven Sherpa, who runs commercial expeditions on Everest and is a senior member of the Expedition Operators Association in Nepal.
This year, 520 climbers have reached the summit of Everest. On 19 May, around 150 climbed the last 3,000ft of the peak from Camp IV within hours of each other, causing lengthy delays as mountaineers queued to descend or ascend harder sections.
"Most of the traffic jams are at the Hillary Step because only one person can go up or down. If you have people waiting two, three or even four hours that means lots of exposure [to risk]. To make the climbing easier, that would be wrong. But this is a safety feature," said Sherpa ...
I think I'll wait till they install an escalator.
Jason Burke of The Guardian has the story: Link