Despite every man and his Yorkshire Terrier now having climbed the big hill, the media's appetite for stories about it seems undiminished. What's more, micro-innovations in the style of ascents seem limitless.

This year we had the first ascent by a double amputee, New Zealand climber Mark Inglis, who lost his legs to frostbite after being trapped on Mount Cook 24 years ago. Despite chafing on his stumps, and some frostbite in his fingers, Inglis reached the summit and New Zealand's prime minister, Helen Clark, herself a mountaineer, hailed the achievement. "As a very amateur climber myself with two sound legs and having got to 19,700 feet, I can appreciate what an amazing achievement this is and I offer him my full congratulations," she said.

But almost immediately, news that Inglis had climbed past dying climber David Sharp, a 34-year-old engineer from Guisborough in Teeside, prompted questions about the ethics climbers display in trying to reach the summit of the world. Sir Edmund Hillary himself joined in criticising how Everest is being managed. "It is just ridiculous having 15 or 20 or 30 expeditions all attempting the mountain at the same time," he said after questioning why 40 climbers passed Sharp as he lay stricken. Sharp was seen fiddling with his oxygen equipment, but only Inglis's Sherpa offered him any help. Hillary said: "People are still going up in vast numbers and people are dying on the mountain. One hundred and ninety people have died on Mt Everest. I don't think that is a statistic that is particularly attractive." With the papers full of bad headlines for climbing, perhaps the time has come to reach an international consensus on how climbing on Everest should be managed.

All of this is a bit bewildering to ordinary climbers for whom Everest increasingly seems like an irrelevant sideshow. But at least we can cheer the success of guide Kenton Cool, who became the first Briton to climb the mountain three times while guiding for Sheffield outfitters Jagged Globe. The evergreen guide Victor Saunders reached the summit for the second time as a guide, at the age of 56. And two teenage lads on their GAP year, Rob Gauntlett, of Petworth, Sussex, and James Hooper, of Wellington, Somerset, both 19, reached the summit via the north ridge on 17 May, becoming the youngest Britons to have climbed it.

« Back