Kathmandu, Nepal: Nepal has banned solo climbers from scaling itsmountains, including Mount Everest, in a bid to reduce accidents, anofficial said Saturday.
The cabinet late Thursday endorsed a revision to the Himalayan nation’smountaineering regulations, banning solo climbers from its mountains — oneof a string of measures being flagged ahead of the 2018 spring climbingseason.
“The changes have barred solo expeditions, which were allowed before,”Maheshwor Neupane, secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and CivilAviation, told AFP.
Neupane said that the law was revised to make mountaineering safer anddecrease deaths.
Experienced Swiss climber Ueli Steck lost his life in April this year whenhe slipped and fell from a steep ridge during a solo acclimatisation climbto Nuptse, a peak neighbouring Everest.
The ban is likely to anger elite solo mountaineers, who enjoy the challengeof climbing alone, even eschewing bottled oxygen, and who blame a hugeinflux of commercial expeditions for creating potentially deadlybottlenecks on the world’s tallest peak.
The cabinet also endorsed a ban on double amputee and blind climbers,although Everest has drawn multitudes of mountaineers wanting to overcometheir disabilities and achieve the formidable feat.
New Zealander Mark Inglis, who lost both his legs to frostbite, became thefirst double amputee to reach the top of the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) peakin 2006.
Blind American Erik Weihenmayer scaled Everest in May 2001 and later becamethe only visually-impaired person to summit the highest peaks on all sevencontinents.
Aspiring Everest climber Hari Budha Magar, a former Gurkha soldier who lostboth his legs when he was deployed in Afghanistan, said the ban wasdiscriminatory.
“If the cabinet passes, this is #Discrimination against disable people,breaking #HumanRights,” Magar said in a Facebook post after the decisionwas proposed early this month.
Thousands of mountaineers flock to Nepal — home to eight of the world’s 14peaks over 8,000 metres — each spring and autumn when clear weatherprovides good climbing conditions.
Almost 450 climbers — 190 foreigners and 259 Nepalis — reached the summitof Everest from the south side in Nepal last year.