Influencer Inoxtag, seen here on Mont Blanc, climbed Everest for an online documentary after just one year of training. Photo / @Inoxtag, Instagram
Amateur climbers are set to be banned from scaling Mt Everest under a new law to deter influencers and overcrowding.
Mountaineers will be required to have conquered a 7000m peak before attempting the world’s tallest mountain.
Overcrowding on the mountain has led to bottlenecks and fuelled concerns over safety, waste and the environment.
This has been exacerbated by so-called extreme tourism, influencers, and under-prepared travellers who attempt feats of physical endurance without appropriate training.
A Singaporean couple had to be rescued by helicopter in 2024 after they tried to reach base camp with their 4-year-old son, Atlas.
Rakcent Wong and Carol Tan documented their trip online and faced widespread criticism after their son suffered acute altitude sickness.
A YouTuber called Inoxtag, real name Ines Benazzouz, 22, ascended the mountain after just one year of training, for an online documentary.
His trip cost more than €1 million ($1.9m) and prompted controversy for advertising dangerous climbs to his young followers.
In 2023, a 59-year-old schoolteacher from India died in her attempt to be the first Asian person to summit Everest with a pacemaker.
Suzanne Leopoldina Jesus insisted on continuing to climb the mountain against the advice of her team and died just a few hundred feet above base camp.
Under the new laws, any mountaineer who attempts to climb the 8849m-high Mt Everest “shall be issued a permit only after an applicant provides proof of having previously summited at least one mountain higher than 7000 metres in Nepal”, Himal Gautam, the director of Nepal’s Tourism Department, told the Telegraph.
Gautam said the Nepali mountains have their own “unique features and complexities” and the local experience would help reduce accidents.
By decongesting Everest, the Government aimed to promote its 462 other mountains for commercial climbing, he said, describing the bill as one of the most comprehensive overhauls of Nepal’s mountaineering governance.
Adriana Brownlee, a British climber, who in 2022 became the youngest woman to climb all 14 of the world’s 666.6m mountains at the age of 23, said the proposed law was “just stupid” and would not increase the safety of climbers and supporting staff.
“It’s a very significant bill and will definitely bring down the number of climbers a lot but may not improve safety. It will only cause overcrowding on other peaks now,” Brownlee said.
Brownlee guides around 50 climbers annually in Nepal. She said: “Maybe one or not even one will be a prospective Everest client who has already climbed a 7000-metre peak.”
She admitted Everest was “extremely overcrowded and there are a lot of inexperienced mountaineers”. However, she suggested Nepal should include its Ama Dablam peak and Mount Aconcagua in Argentina as two major training peaks for Everest.
“Safety could be increased in other ways, like ensuring companies providing a certain standard and their Sherpas actually have experience, or making sure climbers have been above 6500m, not 7000m,” she said.
Overcrowding has been blamed for the high number of deaths on Everest.
The bodies of more than 200 climbers still lie on the mountain, some of whom are used as landmarks during the summit.
In May 2019, one of the deadliest years on Everest, Robin Haynes Fisher, a 44-year-old British climber, described by his family as an “aspirational adventurer” reached the summit but died because of what appeared to be altitude sickness on his way back down.
Fisher, an inexperienced climber, reached the summit of Everest during one of the most congested seasons on record. Days earlier, he had admitted before setting off that he feared the dangers of overcrowding.
Photographs from that week showed queues of climbers snaking along the ridge above 8000m, in the so-called “death zone”, where oxygen levels are roughly a third of those at sea level and the body begins to shut down.
His death was one of 11 on Everest that season.
Seven years earlier, in 2012, Shriya Shah-Klorfine, a Canadian businesswoman with limited high-altitude experience, arrived at Everest Base Camp determined to fulfil a childhood dream.
Guides had warned that she lacked the technical skills required for the mountain’s upper reaches.
By the time Shah-Klorfine began her descent, she was exhausted and running low on oxygen. Sherpas tried to help her, but in the thinning air and worsening conditions they were forced to leave her on the mountain, where she died.
The bill was passed unanimously by Nepal’s upper house, and it will now move to the House of Representatives (lower house) to be voted through before a March 5 election.
After ratification, the law is expected to come into force within three months.
The bill also introduces mandatory insurance, age and experience thresholds for climbers, and an environmental protection fund aimed at removing decades of waste from the Himalayas.
It also allows authorities to declare missing climbers legally dead after a year.
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