Nepal waives fee for 97 mountains to coax climbers away from Everest

Telegraph

14 hours ago

Nepal will waive the climbing fee for 97 remote Himalayan peaks for the next two years to draw tourists away from the increasingly congested Mount Everest.
The move comes as the government debates stricter rules requiring climbers to first scale a 7,000-metre peak in the country before being allowed to climb 8,849m (29,030ft) Everest, the world's highest peak, where bottlenecks have fuelled concerns over safety, waste and environment.
Authorities have also decided to increase the permit fee from $11,000 (£8,750) to $15,000 to summit Everest during peak season from September.
Mountaineering is a lucrative business for Nepal, which home to 10 of the world's tallest mountains. In 2024, the climbing permits generated $5.9m, with Everest responsible for more than three quarters of that total.
Nepal's tourism department has now opened 462 mountains for expedition with a hope to promote the country's 'unexplored tourism destinations'.
The fee has been waived off for their 97 peaks, which are located in the remote areas of Nepal's Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces, standing between 5,970m and 7,132m high.
Both provinces, located in the far-western region of Nepal are among the country's poorest and least developed provinces.
Himal Gautam, the director of Nepal's tourism department, told The Telegraph: 'These two provinces have not been able to reap the benefits of the huge tourism potential and remained socially and economically backward. So the main motto is to attract tourists to these regions and allow the local economy to flourish.'
Climbers have historically shown little interest in these 97 remote peaks. In contrast, some 421 climbing permits were issued for Everest in 2024 alone.
The expedition reports of the past three years reveal that only 15 out of 97 mountains in these two provinces have been summited, generating a paltry expedition royalty of $10,000.
'So by sacrificing that small amount of money, we hope to attract more tourists to these two regions,' Mr Gautam said.
Everest has been plagued by overcrowding, environmental concerns and a series of fatal climbing attempts.
In April 2024, Nepal's Supreme Court ordered the government to issue expedition permits and allocate time for expeditions based on the 'bearing capacity of our mountains', Gautam said. The order was aimed to limit the number of mountaineering permits issued for Everest and several other peaks, he said.
He said several investigations have linked the increasing fatal accidents at Everest to the ' prevalence of inexperienced climbers '.
'This is the reason the government has proposed that anyone wanting to scale Everest to have first summited a mountain over 7,000m in the country,' he said.
'So it will help us reduce fatal accidents and also draw more climbers to other peaks as well,' he said.