Mount Everest in the Himalayas.
© AFP/FileKATHMANDU (AFP) - Every year hundreds of young foreign adventurers circumvent Asian bureaucracy and huge fees to notch up experience in the so-called greater ranges whose spectacular summits have increasingly lured Westerners.
"I object to paying thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. I could never afford it," said one European climber, who said he has scaled peaks from 7,000 to more than 8,000 metres in Nepal, Pakistan and India and never paid for a permit.
"You've got rich big-heads clogging up Everest. People at the summit advertising sun tan lotion. It's an obscene, commercial circus, so I prefer to do it illegally," he told AFP on condition he not be named as he could be barred from travelling to some of the countries.
A permit to climb Mount Everest, the world's highest peak at 8,848 metres, currently costs 25,000 dollars per person for the popular South Col route.
In the case of the French mountaineers, they bought a cheap permit for a relatively small Himalayan peak in Nepal before flouting international boundaries and hopping over the border to Tibet.
The search was abandoned Thursday after rescuers concluded they died in an avalanche on Ganesh Himal 7, a much higher peak along the border.
"The French authorities cannot recover bodies as they are in China," said Deebas Shah, the general secretary of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
Had the four attempted the mountain legally, it would have cost them thousands of dollars in fees and would have tied them to an official Chinese minder. They would first have needed China's permission to travel to Tibet, many parts of which are off-limits to foreigners.
"Around 30 percent of climbers in Nepal are doing it illegally," admitted Shah, whose association issues permits for Nepal's peaks.
"They usually take one permit and then go to another peak because the other mountains are so close by," he said, adding that last year five groups were caught.
"They have to pay a fine of the same amount of the permit they avoided getting. There is no fear of going to jail, we don't even notify immigration about it," he acknowledged.
He said the only real deterrent was the risk of being stuck on a mountain with no chance of raising help. But for some climbers, this disregard for safety is part of the allure.
An illegal ascent is "climbing in its purest form. You're pushing yourself to the absolute limit, going fast and light with no backup," said the European climber.
"It takes the ego out of it, because you have to be discreet and can't go and boast in the bars of Kathmandu."
"I’ve met Australians, New Zealanders, Slovenians, Poles, Irish, all doing it illegally," said a Frenchman, another self-confessed, permit-dodging climber who insisted that his name also not be used.
While the Nepal Mountaineering Association's primary concern is safety, it also regrets that the permits do not bring in enough revenue, which is used to repair bridges, trekking routes and shelters for porters.
"We (also) conduct programs in altitude awareness, we even give a certain amount to Nepali climbers' families who have been killed," Shah said.
Illegal climbing however shows no signs of abating despite the recent deaths.
"I couldn't put a number on how many illegal attempts or ascents happen each year. But it is something that happens more than you'd think," said the French climber.
"In Europe, if want to get onto a legal expedition to a big Himalayan peak, then you’ve really no choice except to get into a big alpine club, which are invariably run by stuffy, pipe-smoking old men.
"Otherwise you spend a lot of money yourself or get sponsors. It kind of takes the thrill out of it."
©AFP