An unexpected video, filmed several thousand meters above sea level, has already accumulated more than 3.7 million views on Twitter since it was posted on Monday. It shows climbers forming a queue in full ascent of the highest peak in the world: Everest. The French hiking and mountaineering enthusiast who relayed the video received it “at the end of the weekend”, he told TF1 News.
The images were filmed in the year 2023 by a mountaineer on the most famous of the mountains in the Himalayan range, explained the Frenchman. Between mid-April and late May, the weather is the best for mountaineers wanting to challenge Everest. Traffic jams are therefore not impossible as the number of permits issued has exploded.
A dissuasive crowd for some
It even reached a record in 2023 with 478 permits issued by the tourism department, compared to 409 in 2019, the previous record according to Channel News Asia. The crowds are sometimes such that some climbers decide to give up. This is notably the case of an American, who described to a local newspaper in his country on May 17 “an uninterrupted vertical line of people (…) up to the top”.
These problems would not be new on the roof of the world. Already in 2019, a Nepalese-British mountaineer posted a snapshot showing a large crowd. If the phenomenon can have an impact on the pollution of the places, the health of the climbers is also concerned. Some deaths would even be attributed to the high attendance at altitude.