A benefit of commercialization is that our sirdars and serdars Sherpas have all found steady employment as teams rather than being a random sampling every year, and that's been positive. On the north side, that stabilizing hasn't really happened so much yet. There are plenty of commercial outfits working on the north side, but less steadily. There are a couple of players who've been coming back consistently to the north side but there's been a lot more start-up commercial teams or one-time-only commercial teams that venture to the north side. I see it in terms of stability, and there's some pretty stable outfits out there but there's a lot that, yeah, that are lot "less stable" let's put it that way.

JENKINS: Guy, why don't you jump in here? Guy and David both just returned from Everest, so why don't you give us maybe a picture. How crowded is it on these routes, Guy? How's the climbing? What's the fixed-line situation? The camp situation? I'm just trying to give a picture to our readers of what's actually there.

COTTER: Fair enough. I would say from a crowded perspective—I can't comment on the north side because I haven't been over there—but I would say, in terms of the south side, we saw our biggest crowding, I think it was around '93, and that was when the Nepalese government decided to increase the peak fees from around $10,000 US for a permit to around $70,000 US the following year, so it seems around '93 it was a very, very busy time.

Since then, I don't think we've seen as many people on the mountain. It's hard to speak to, but you might be looking, in a year like this year, at 17 different teams with seven to-12 people on each permit. That could correspond to at least 300 people in base camp. And I don't know what the final stats were, but I think somewhere over 400 people summitting from both sides, and up to half of those coming from the south side this year.

But how crowded that really seems on the mountain is kind of dependent on certain factors, such as the weather throughout the season. If you've got good weather, people kind of spread out on the mountain. If you've got a limited number of summit days, (there are only a couple of days that people are able to summit) then it obviously does feel very crowded when all the teams are trying to summit through a short window period.

Overall on the mountain, it can seem relatively busy on certain days, but years like this one with a reasonable amount of good weather, people spread out on the mountain and it does not seem that crowded.

How it all works on the mountain with fixed-ropes, camps, and everything like that, is that—as Dave alluded to—is that with teams coming back year after year things seem very well organized. Everyone has a good system of doing things. We've all worked together before, we all communicate about how things are going to be gotten done, and therefore the whole process of putting in ropes and campsites seems to flow quite well.

JENKINS: Ed, how does this sound to you? Neil, as well? Neil, you were there in '96, we all know that. Ed, you've been there many times. How has it all changed since '96. What are the changes you see?

VIESTURS: Well, I think Dave is correct that a lot of the consistent players tend to be on the south side and there are a few that hang out on the north side, but the north side is getting more and more popular simply because, I think, that the fees are less on the Chinese side so people are going to take advantage of that.

But also, on the south side, other than the (what I think) legitimate players, and guide service and outfitters, there are a few people that trickle in with the label of "organized expedition" or "guide service" and really kind of get away with things that we scratch our heads at. And I don't know if that happened this year, if you've seen some of that, but two years ago, we saw a few of those people up there and, um….

JENKINS: What are you talking about Ed, getting with things that you look at askance at, or think might not be safe? Give me an example.

VIESTURS: The way they're guiding, and the types, and level of ability that their clients have. And the level and ability of the person that is actually guiding and leading. That person often has no right to be there themselves, let alone leading a person or a group of people. If something goes wrong, he can't handle it, or they can't handle it. So here we go with a people—that Guy said as well—they got their act together, they're acting cohesively with other groups that communicate and then there's these other groups that kind of "squeeze up, squeeze down."