Guy Cotter

So the management of how the mountain works as far as getting from the bottom to the top has improved dramatically and hence why we have a safer mountain than what we once did.

And a big part of that was what we started doing.

Rob Hall and Gary Ball started with Adventure Consultants, started guiding on Everest about the same time back in the early 90s.

Now, prior to that,

The only people who would end up going to Everest were people on national teams who were select from many countries.

They had to have special approvals from their alpine club and sometimes big sponsored groups.

But for the everyday climber who had a body of climbing background that had built them up to being a

A potential candidate for Everest never got the opportunity to step onto the mountain.

It was very, very exclusive.

And so what we managed to do was to be able to offer the opportunity for appropriately experienced and skilled climbers to come and join us to climb Everest.

We turned it into a democratic mountain as opposed to an exclusive one, and it was a positive change.

No, in 1953 was the first time it was commercialized because those expeditions were sponsored.

Money flowed around those expeditions.

The local people were being paid.

So that was commercial.

A better terminology rather than commercialized in 92 when we were there was we were guiding.

And collectively with the Sherpa teams that we worked with, we developed a great body of knowledge and awareness on how to,

manage the mountain much better and avoid the pitfalls and making the same mistakes that a lot of the expeditions beforehand would make because they were just too new to it.

And that's what has helped increase the safety.

But it has also led to a much larger number of people going to the mountain.