China Reopens Mount Everest To Foreigners

China is allowing international climbers to reach Mount Everest via Tibet for the first time since the pandemic.

One of the Western guides, Adrian Ballinger, has climbed Everest eight times. He favors the Tibet route (which goes north) over the more popular Nepal route (which goes south) to reach the peak of the world’s highest mountain. He will be leading a group of climbers this year through his company, Alpenglow Expeditions.

China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) is the organization that distributes all passes to utilize the Chinese route up the mountain, which is known as Qomolangma in Chinese, instead of a tourism official or council in Beijing.

Furthermore, the Chinese government has not made any official notification informing the public that passes will be distributed.

Therefore, according to Ballinger, the CTMA’s season pricing list is the best indicator for a non-Chinese climber when the Tibet side of Everest will be open. These lists cover the price of native guides, translators, yaks (which carry equipment up and down the mountain), and transportation from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to Everest Base Camp.

When obtaining a tourist visa for China, foreign nationals must also obtain a separate visa for Tibet, a semi-autonomous territory. Climbers can get help with this from the CTMA.

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There is a brief window of opportunity to climb Everest, often from late April until mid-May. To save time, Ballinger’s crew will pre-acclimate at home before traveling to China on April 25.

Even though Nepal has the more well-known and frequently photographed route to the summit of Everest, more people also means more garbage, more erosion, and more human waste.

This wasn’t always the case, though.

There there was a greater popularity for climbing from the Chinese side than the Nepali side. Ballinger notes that between around 2000 and 2007, the Chinese side had greater popularity. It was widely believed that this was due to the fact that it was safer.