JENKINS: Guy I like what you said. That part of this is environmental and that is to leave no trace, to pack out what you pack in and also to simply be honest in the style in which you climb the mountain. If you're honest with it, then you should be fine. Is that kind of that bottom line?

COTTER: Yes, that's the bottom line. I also think there's another aspect that we haven't discussed and that's that in a lot of our climbing media we do look up to people who climb without oxygen, and there's been a lot of books written by people who have done Everest like you, without oxygen, that people would read maybe as in a book or a business book and go "I can see that, that looks good, yeah I can see why these guys wouldn't use oxygen. I think that's great, I won't use it either. I'm going to be a clean climber."

So, you get these people heading out thinking "if those guys can do it, I can do it,", and sure enough they get onto one of these big mountains because they've read them. These people, who are their idols say this is the way it should be done. And they get up there and they get up high, they get a little bit disoriented, and they fall off.

These people aren't I think, often getting the message that the likes of Ed and people climbing at that level without oxygen are incredible athletes, that not only are great athletes with a very good physiology but people who have been mountaineering for many many, many years. They have years of experience under their belt.

I think this whole oxygen debate is kind of saying to people: You should try and climb without oxygen, whereas most people need oxygen. There are only a very small number of people that should be allowed to climb without oxygen. That's the other message that should be getting across. There's a lot of people going and throwing themselves off mountains that shouldn't—that should build up their experience over a lot of years and I think that's a separate debate. But when we bring in the oxygen, I felt that this was important I speak my line.

VIESTURS: When I climb without oxygen I chose to do it for personal reasons, and whenever I lecture about it or talk about it, I never say "my way is the right way" or "using oxygen is the wrong way." I truly believe that even climbing Everest with oxygen is a tremendous achievement and I've always said that. I just for personal reasons chose to go a different direction and not to say that this is the only way. For me, it was a choice.

When I guide on Everest—and I have guided on Everest—I always use oxygen because I believe that you are going to be better able, more capable of helping and doing your job. And you're also leading by example as well. If something goes wrong, it's like wearing a seat belt. You couldn't fault the guide for saying "well you weren't using oxygen," so when I'm guiding or when I'm there on behalf of people to take care of them , I'm gonna use oxygen.

JENKINS: I think that covers it. I think that's the good on the oxygen thing. Now we're going to talk about the future. What is the future of Everest? What is the future of guiding on Everest? What does it look like? We've had quite a few of what appear like unnecessary deaths and some behavior that is at least questionable. What do you guys see happening? What should happen perhaps? What are best-case scenarios? What are the realistic scenarios?

HAHN: Maybe I'll take a crack at that first. I think there are gonna continue to be accidents on Everest. There are still accidents on Rainier, accidents on McKinley, accidents on Mt Cook, the Matterhorn—there are still going to be accidents and deaths on Everest and occasionally some of them are going to be caught by the media and sensationalized or maybe there will be sensational accidents up there.

But some of us are going to keep trying to keep climbing the mountain because we love it and we're gonna keep trying to work on it because we like introducing people to that environment, because it's good work. There does seem to be the perception that things keep getting worse and worse on Everest and I don't think that's true. The crowding…yeah it's been busy, but it's been busy for a number of years now and I don't think it's been getting worse with every season.

Some of these issues that people become aware of, well some of these issues are actually getting better. In some places the mountain is actually getting cleaner. And it's stuff that we all have to work on with time and with each of us getting practice.

With Sherpas getting more and more experience as a body with each year, I think there are improvements and some gains on Everest. I'm not particularly worried if it loses some of it's stature in the publics' eyes, and ya know, I know why I like climbing Mt Everest, and what other people think of the mountain and how they judge the achievement, well that's up them. We never will have so much control over what people's perception of the mountain is that they don't really want to dive in and understand it enough as much as we've had an opportunity to understand it.

JENKINS: How about the other guys?

BIEDLEMAN: I think one of the issues that the public has is that Everest has been an icon in the past for achievement. We hold it very high. We've used it for many years as one of those icons for setting a very high standard and a goal and going out and achieving that, because Everest is that, both physically and literally and figuratively.

I think one of the problems that we as public have in looking at Everest is that now that so many people have summitted it, it has taken away some of the luster of it as being that icon. As soon as we see that, we assume or think that there is a problem because some of that luster is gone. And maybe some of that is true, but maybe some of that comes from the fact that like many things, once it's done and there's knowledge about it, more people aspire to do it, numbers increase and that accomplishment gets done more and more.

That's just something we have to accept with Everest and other things that human beings have aspired to do and now do quite regularly.