Skip to main content

Nepal declares ban on solo, blind and double amputee climbers from Everest

This ban is likely to irk solo mountaineers, who enjoy the challenge of climbing alone.
In a bid to prevent accidents, Nepal has banned solo climbers from climbing its mountains, including Mount Everest, reported news agency AFP. Earlier on Friday, the cabinet declared revised regulations of the Himalayan nation’s mountaineering, where banning solo climbers from scaling its mountains was one of the key measures being flagged ahead of the 2018 spring climbing season.
The cabinet also declared a ban on double amputee and blind climbers, even though Everest has drawn multitudes of mountaineers wanting to overcome their disabilities and achieve the formidable feat.
“The changes have barred solo expeditions, which were allowed before,” Maheshwor Neupane, secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, told AFP. Neupane added that the law was revised to make mountaineering safer and decrease deaths.
Earlier in April this year, an experienced Swiss climber Ueli Steck lost his life when he slipped and fell from a steep ridge. The climber was on a solo acclimatisation climb to Nuptse, a peak neighbouring Everest.
This ban is likely to irk solo mountaineers, who enjoy the challenge of climbing alone.
According to the report, the first double amputee to reach the top of the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) peak in 2006 was New Zealander Mark Inglis, who lost both his legs to frostbite. Blind American Erik Weihenmayer scaled Everest in May 2001 and later became the only visually-impaired person to summit the highest peaks on all seven continents.
A former Gurkha soldier and an aspiring Everest climber Hari Budha Magar, who lost both his legs when he was deployed in Afghanistan, said the ban was discriminatory.
In a Facebook post after the decision was proposed earlier this month,  Magar wrote,”If the cabinet passes, this is #Discrimination against disable people, breaking #HumanRights.”
Nepal, a home to eight of the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000 metres witnesses thousands of mountaineers each spring and autumn when clear weather provides good climbing conditions. Last year, around 450 climbers that included 190 foreigners and 259 Nepalis, reached the summit of Everest from the south side in Nepal.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

North Korea exported coal to South and Japan via Russia-intelligence: Sources

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (File/AP Photo) North Korea shipped coal to Russia last year which was then delivered to South Korea and Japan in a likely violation of UN sanctions, three Western European intelligence sources said. The UN Security Council banned North Korean exports of coal last August 5 under sanctions intended to cut off an important source of the foreign currency Pyongyang needs to fund its nuclear weapon and long-range missile programmes. But the secretive Communist state has at least three times since then shipped coal to the Russian ports of Nakhodka and Kholmsk, where it was unloaded at docks and reloaded onto ships that took it to South Korea or Japan, the sources said. A Western shipping source said separately that some of the cargoes reached Japan and South Korea in October last year. A US security source also confirmed the coal trade via Russia and said it was continuing. “Russia’s port of Nakhodka is becoming a transhipping hub for North Kor...
Post a Comment
Read more

North Korea to send athletes, cheer squad to Winter Olympics: S Korea

People watch a TV screen showing South and North Korea, left, meeting, at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) North Korea said during rare talks with the South on Tuesday it will send a delegation of high-ranking officials, athletes and a cheering squad to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, according to a senior South Korean official. Seoul proposed inter-Korean military talks to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula and a reunion of family members in time for February’s Lunar New Year holiday, said South Korea’s vice unification minister Chun Hae-sung. South Korea also proposed that athletes from the two Koreas march together at the Games’ opening ceremony and other joint activities between the two nations during the Winter Olympics, Chun told reporters outside the first formal talks between North and South Korea in more than two years. The talks are being closely watched by world lea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rodrigo Duterte demands dignity for Filipinos in threat to withdraw workers from Kuwait

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (File) Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned on Wednesday he may impose a permanent ban on sending workers to Kuwait and withdraw his countrymen working there if another Filipino domestic helper is raped and dies. The comments were the second time in less than a week that Duterte expressed anger about alleged abuse in Kuwait, where he said low-paid Filipinos were made to endure rape and starvation. He asked the governments of Kuwait and other Middle East countries, where more than a million Filipinos work, to take steps to end the abuse and “to treat my countrymen as human beings with dignity”. “I hope I am not committing a diplomatic faux pas. But one more incident … I’m going to ban,” he said in a speech before leaving for a regional summit in India. “And I’m sorry, the Filipinos there, you can all go home,” he said. “If you leave, they will also be having a hell of a time adjusting to that.” On Friday, the labour ministry ...
Post a Comment
Read more