ABSTRACT
On 29 May 1953 two climbers in the ninth British Everest expedition, Sir Edmund Hillary (New Zealand) and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (Nepal), became the first mountaineers to stand on the summit of Mt Everest. Four decades later, in December 1993, Myra Shackley published an article in Tourism Management entitled ‘No room at the top?’ in which she reported on a meeting about the future of high-altitude tourism hosted by the British Mountaineering Council at the Royal Geographical Society, London, in May of that year. Issues raised at the meeting included the need to ensure reciprocity between expeditions, trekking agencies and local communities, environmental and social responsibility and regulations to minimize impacts. The meeting attendees did not want to see mountains as ‘giant cash cows’ (Shackley 1993: 485) and a member of the United Nations Mountain Agenda group attending the meeting raised the issue of the effects of climate change. What was notable about the meeting was that climbers, adventure tourism operators and international organizations addressed issues related to mountaineering tourism (commercial, guided and non-guided). Of concern to attendees at the meeting were reports of queues on Everest and Shackley commented that ‘On 12 May 1993, 38 mountaineers climbed Everest on the same day’ (Shackley 1993: 483). Reference was made to British mountaineer Peter Boardman calling Everest an ‘amphitheater of the ego’. It is only possible to speculate on what the British Mountaineering Council’s invitees would have thought about the surge of interest in climbing Everest (and the other Seven Summits) in the years that have followed. Nepal and Mu (this volume) note in reference to Mt Everest that ‘in 2012, a record 169 climbers reached the top on a single day from the Nepalese side’ on a day in which a total of 234 climbers summited Mt Everest. In the 20 years since the British Mountaineering Council meeting, participation in mountaineering tourism has surely escalated beyond the imagination of those who attended that meeting. This book seeks to critically address the development of mountaineering tourism phenomena, exploring the role of people – mountain tourists, mountaineers, porters, guides, support workers and local communities – and the social and environmental impacts of mountaineering tourism in doing so.
