Everest fees reduced by Nepal government

New rates have been applied to a hundreds of mountains across the country, but the biggest cuts have been made to Everest and its South Col route, used in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa for the historic first ascent of the mountain and now the Normal route to the summit from the south.

At present the "climbing permit" is fixed at $25,000 per climber for the spring season, but in an effort to save money currently many climbers choose to form groups of seven and purchase the $70,000 group permit. This group permit will now be eliminated. Under the new guidelines, as of 1 January 2015 an individual permit can now be secured at $11,000. According to Tilakram Pandey of the Nepalese tourism ministry in the The Telegraph yesterday "The change in royalty rates will discourage artificially formed groups, where the leader does not even know some of the members in him own team. It will promote responsible and serious climbers."

As mentioned previously, climbing permits for the country's other mountains have been reduced, too. For example, the cost of climbing the seven other 8000ers located in this Himalayan kingdom, namely Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu and Annapurna, will drop from $5,000 during spring to $1,800. And in the other seasons, and on the other mountains, the permit will cost even less.