JENKINS: Guy what do you think about all this?

COTTER: Yeah, I agree with what Dave and Neil said. Things are gonna continue, we're still going to get more news, and I think people are going to get tired of the news that's coming out after awhile.If we keep seeing the same sorts of news coming out, we're going to get a little bit immunized to it.

JENKINS: Besides the news, how about the actual experience on Everest? How do you see that evolving Guy?

COTTER: Well I think it's been relatively static in most ways over the last few years in the respect of similar numbers of people. You're gonna get some good years, some bad years weather-wise and everything else. I can't see it changing dramatically, I think it's just gonna keep carrying on, doing it's thing. I think for those of us who work there, there will probably be small improvements every year, as we discussed-things getting better as far as the processes that we operate by. But yeah, hard to know what the future is going to hold really.

JENKINS: Um, Ed? Maybe I'll let you finish up this whole roundtable, both assessing where the future of Everest may be going, and also my final question here is: Does Everest still symbolize kind of an ultimate achievement? Is it true? You've climbed it with and without oxygen. And has it always been the case?

VIESTURS: You know I think it has always been the case, and it will still because it's always going to be the case (unless erosion takes over there quicker than it has on K2!) and I think it will always be this iconic peak that people will strive for.

I know the reasons that I climbed it: I enjoyed the experience, it was challenging. I mean particularly without oxygen, I can't imagine doing anything harder. And when I achieved that goal, I felt so good just for the sake of doing it, not to go around talking about it or toot my horn about it, and I would hope that most people who choose to go to Everest would choose to go for the same reasons, to say, "I want to achieve something beyond anything I've ever done. And if I can, and get to the summit of that beautiful mountain, I will feel so good about what I just did."

Of course, there will always be people who seek it as a trophy, something to talk about, but those kinds of people are always going to be around. But true mountaineers go there for the experience and to live the history of Everest; something they've learned about and read about, and to actually be there in the footsteps of Mallory or Hilary. It's such a cool historic place, so I think it will always have that cache, and that will never go away.

And I believe that the numbers will kind of stabilize. There's only a certain number of people that have the time and energy and money and experience to sign up or to actually go with their own groups to the mountain, so I don't think it will get more overrun with more people than we already have.

JENKINS: This has been great guys, I've covered most of what I've wanted to cover about Everest. Is there any final thoughts, conclusions—if there's anything that we haven't covered that you feel is really essential to understanding Everest, at least within this context and this forum, go for it right now.

COTTER: Well I'd like to chuck something in there Mark, just regarding the whole commercialization aspect of Everest. I think the misconception people have is that commercialization on Eversest has only happened recently. Everest has always been commercialized by the expeditions going there.

You know the early British expeditions had lots of advertising based around their sponsors based around the expeditions, and the Sherpas have always been making money out of it. All these years, Sherpas have been making income from climbing Everest. And the perception is that commercialism is only a recent phenomenon, but it's actually been there forever and it's taking quite a long time for mountaineers to kind of get over this stuff.

People get a little carried away with this aspect of it and the reality of it is that it doesn't take a lot of money to run a successful Everest trip and there's lots of positive aspects as well. There's Sherpas who—are a geographically unfortunate people—are now they're much better off financially, which is a great thing to see. They have a better level of health and they live longer and everything else because of that, so guides can even afford to buy cars! So that's a point I don't often see made.

JENKINS: Neil, any final thoughts or comments?

BIEDLEMAN: Oh probably… but nothing I feel I need to add I guess. A lot of good experience with these guys. Between the three of them they've been there almost 30 times, that's a lot of experience.