JENKINS: I think this is a perfect segway into my next question. I know we're not moving fast and I hope that that's okay with you guys—but it's great stuff, and I'm hoping the magazine uses it all! Ok, I think you guys have done a fairly good job of saying why you believe that Everest can be guided. Now the question is, should the guiding services and the guides be regulated?

Dave, you brought up the issue of the Matterhorn. Yeah, there have been over 500 deaths on the Matterhorn and it's still guided—but it's regulated. Same with Rainier. Same with Denali. You guys are all familiar with this. Most of those mountains—many of the big, famous mountains—you have to be a concessionaire, and that concessionaire has to have passed a skill test and safety and rescue tests, and they are very, very competent. I just came back from Alaska and was involved in the search for Sue Nott , and that team up there is unbelievable—that ranger team and the concessionaires who work that mountain are also unbelievable. And that's not the case necessarily I think is what you're saying, on Everest. Now should there be some sort of guide licensing for Everest? And if there should be, could it be implemented?

COTTER: Well, I might jump in there, and say that I personally think it would be very difficult to regulate guiding on Everest, the reason being that the Nepalese rely heavily on the income from Everest especially for part of their GDP.

I mean, we do bring in a lot of money to that country on expeditions and they're not going to do anything to reduce that. I think that some of the expeditions that are occurring over there—especially the cheap commercial expeditions that are popping up—are, actually Nepalese trekking agencies running a lot of these expeditions. So therefore, these trekking agencies have a lot of political clout and support and it's going to be very difficult for the Nepalese government to turn around to these people and say "oh no, you've got to be regulated by some Western standards."

They're not going to like that at all. It'd be like us imposing our standards on them. Last time this sort of discussion came up, Sir Edmund Hilary mentioned that he thought the mountain should be closed, and at that stage the price for going to the mountain went up 700 percent.

JENKINS: What's this the peak fee? Guy, the peak fee jumped from $10,000 to what it currently is at $70,000? And you're indicating that that this is because people started talking about regulating guiding on Everest?

COTTER: Yes, and so therefore, often the response to these calls for regulation lead to something we don't really want. You brought up Denali, which is one of the most highly-regulated mountains in the world, you know, because the park service only gives a certain number of concessions and is very much involved in how all that works. I think that from the outside looking in, Denali doesn't really work as well as it could because it's over-regulated by a government body that isn't involved in the actual guiding itself.

So I think that that, applied to Asia and Everest would not work at all well. I think, again, it's a matter of potential customers having a greater amount of knowledge about what the different options are, and unfortunately there's just not a lot of information out there apart from the promotional information that each company has. So it's very good to see this sort of forum occurring, where people are actually given a bit more information about what teams go on.

JENKINS: Perhaps Ed, Neil, or Dave—you guys could also speak to this issue of whether there should be concessionaires, or whether it's even possible.

VIESTURS: I would agree with Guy. To go into another country and tell them they need to start regulating would be very difficult first of all, and then to figure out who would be sitting on a committee and what their knowledge is of what's actually going on would be very hard as well.

We couldn't send our own committee over there and then start picking and choosing, you know, who gets to go and who doesn't get to go. I would agree as well that it's going to be up to the people to choose and also hopefully that more legitimate people are actually operating trips on the mountain. And maybe, eventually, it'll just sort itself out.

People will see that if this kind of thing continues on year after year, people are going to hopefully get it that ultimately, you do get what you pay for. And if you do have a problem on the mountain, "if I'm paying extra, I will have people with me that can help me not only to get up but to get down safely."

It's just gonna have to be a kind of "Buyer Beware" kind of a thing. And if that doesn't happen, this kind of stuff is going to keep repeating itself, and it has repeated itself year after year. But, as Guy said, this year for some reason the media has kind of woken up and said: "Hey, what's going on on Everest?" And we've seen this kind of stuff going on repeatedly.

BIEDLEMAN: Ed, I have to disagree with one thing that you say there. And that is that people are going to figure this out. I think that's true that some people will figure this out, and those are the people that you're going to want on your trip and they're gonna be successful in the terms that we've talked about here. But, there's always going to be people who come on these trips who think they know better, think they can do it cheaper, think that they can get involved and figure it out themselves the first time, and I just think that that element is never going to go away.

VIESTURS: Right, that's what I meant. I meant to say that I would hope that people would figure it out, but like I said, I don't think they will because things like this are going to repeat themselves and we can't really-other than educating them—help figure it out for them. We've gotta let them know, "here's what you're getting for what you paid for," but I agree with you that some people won't get it.

BIEDLEMAN: Right but the problem-in addition, not a contradiction, but in addition to that—[is that ] as the guiding services, you guys get better and better and understand the mountain more and make it safer for your customers and provide more margin and good services. As the guides get better and guide services get better and you guys figure it out so it's safer, more margin and you understand the mountain more—that's fantastic, and that's good for your customers and you guys. But on the mountain as you know, the higher you go, eventually everyone condenses and there's this confluence where all the other people who are more strung out and don't have the margins, intersect paths and that's always going to be there when you have such diversity of abilities and competence on the mountain, And that puts everyone at risk.

HAHN: I would just point out that you can treat crowds and inexperienced climbers in somewhat the way you treat poor weather and poor route conditions and rockfall and icefall potential—you know, you can have your radar up, and if crowding conditions are looming, that's a good enough reason to call off a summit bid or postpone one.

BIEDLEMAN: Absolutely Dave, but as Ed and Guy know, during our situation in '96, those guys went back up on the mountain. thTy weren't even there in that place—Ed's radar was up—and Ed put himself along with some other folks in a very dangerous position to help members out that were up there,. I know you've done the same and would do the same so you could be safe and sound back in your basecamp tent. Something unfolds and the call to action comes, you're gonna go for it. And that's again putting yourself in harm's way there.

HAHN: You bet, and as with you I don't have a lot of faith in climbers and would-be climbers to always sort that out ahead of time, but I guess I have even less faith in a government entity to…

BIEDLEMAN: Oh yeah, I totally agree and I'm not saying these things thinking that they could be regulated. Maybe in a perfect world, if it were all of a sudden regulated, maybe there would be some benefit to that. But ten years ago—maybe it's changed—but ten years ago just going into the Ministry of Tourism and trying to get your permit was an unbelievable process-browning papers stacked up the ceiling, being blown around by ceiling fans. I can't even imagine how they would tackle regulation responsibly and effectively. And then in the end, somehow westernerss would get what they needed or what they wanted there and the people of Nepal would probably feel that their mountain had been hijacked by someone else. So I think that the regulation process…they don't even have a government right now, so I can't imagine how they would regulate something like this.