KATHMANDU, May 9 — Nepal has issued a record 492 permits to climb Mount Everest this spring, officials said on Friday.

“We have issued a historic high number of permits for Sagarmatha,” Himal Gautam, spokesman for the tourism department, told AFP.

The last record was in 2023 when 478 permits were issued in a post-pandemic rush on the mountains.

As most of these mountaineers will attempt to summit Everest with the help of at least one Nepali guide, about a thousand climbers will be heading for the summit in the next few weeks.

A team of highly skilled mountaineers, known in Nepal as “icefall doctors”, began fixing ropes and ladders on Everest last month, to prepare for the spring climbing season.

But a serac — a block of glacial ice — above the already treacherous Khumbu icefall disrupted their work, sparking fears of delays in the limited summit season on the world’s highest peak.

Gautam said that the route has been opened up to the South Col mountain pass at 7,906 metres (26,000 feet) through an alternate road.

“Climbers are now making acclimatisation rotations as usual and we hope for a good season,” Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, one of the biggest expedition organisers, told AFP.

However, the high number of climbers raises fears of heavy traffic and bottlenecks en route to the summit if there is a shorter window to reach it because of unfavourable weather.

In 2019, a massive queue on Everest forced teams to wait hours in freezing temperatures, lowering depleted oxygen levels that can lead to sickness and exhaustion.

At least four of 11 deaths that year were blamed on overcrowding.

China has closed the summit from the northern Tibet side this season, causing an extra flow of climbers in the south.

The highest number of climbers receiving permits this season were from China (109), followed by the United States (76).

Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 10 highest peaks and foreign climbers who flock to its mountains are a major source of revenue for the country.

The government has collected a total of US$7.1 million from the Everest permits. — AFP