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Posted by Bill S on May 19, 2008 at 11:38:19 am EDT
In reply to New Brashears video on Everest 1996 posted by Bill S on May 12, 2008 at 5:38:20 pm EDT

NewHiker -
The bottleneck is a combination of the Hillary Step and the ridge just above the South Summit. It is difficult to pass another climber in either direction there. There are several things to manipulate at the same time - you have to move through a very narrow area, trying to use the same footsteps in the snow that others used, and you have to transfer your safety line around the climber you are passing. Some of the climbers are very slow, due to tiredness, lack of oxygen, and just plain lack of skill. It is the same with any waiting line/queue or like a narrow hallway that has crowds going in both directions. If you had only one or two parties on the route, the delay would be fairly insignificant. But when you are trying to run a half-dozen teams of up to 10 people through the funnel, you can have delays of literally hours. If someone gets so exhausted they just sit down in place or if they don't have the strength or skill to get up the 20 or 30 feet of the Hillary step, there is almost no way to get around them. The only way around it would be to limit the number on the last section to, say, 10 people on a given day. There is a similar choke point on the North Ridge at the Second Step.

I have been on mountains with crowds trying to get through choke points, none with the time criticality and most with ways to pass, given sufficient skill - several popular routes in the Alps (Hornli Ridge on the Matterhorn, for example, or even some via ferratas in the Dolomites), the cables on Half Dome on a summer day, the officially permitted route on Ayers Rock, the headwall above the 14k camp and the passage of Washburn's Thumb on Denali's West Buttress, and others. If you look at the photos of Half Dome's cables taken on summer days, you see people crowded against each other for close to 1000 feet of the cables. A skilled climber with rock shoes can readily walk around the crowds by stepping outside the cables, and can be safe by clipping a safety line to the cable on whichever side. But this can tempt unskilled hikers to try the same thing with inadequate footgear and no safety line. At the choke points on Everest, you don't have that much space off the fixed lines and packed path.

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