Arriving on Mount Everest in 2024 — a year after a record 17 climbers died on the peak — every step of Conor Coleman's journey to the summit was carefully planned.
The then-22-year-old Perth student joined an expedition with some of Nepal's most experienced guides, carried a GPS tracker, and prepared by climbing another 8,000-metre peak, Manaslu, the year before.
Before setting off, he said his climbing credentials were scrutinised by Nepal's Department of Tourism, as per regulations introduced that year.
"We had the radio logs sent in to confirm [the Manaslu climb], the logistics company logged it in their own system and also verified it, [and I submitted] all the photos with the time attached," Mr Coleman said.
But while he was diligently ticking the boxes to climb Everest legally and safely, two Mongolian climbers sidestepped Nepalese authorities for an unguided ascent of their own.
"They went up around the time that I was summitting without Sherpas and without telling anybody — it's very, very tough to police," Mr Coleman said.
The bodies of Usukhjargal Tsedendamba and Purevsuren Lkhagvajav were later found near the summit, without radios or bottled oxygen.
'The silly rule season'
The Mongolians were among eight deaths on Everest last year — well short of the record death toll of 17 in 2023 — but an avoidably high number, according to mountaineering writer Alan Arnette.
In the months leading up to the 2025 climbing season, which has recently begun, Nepal's Department of Tourism made several safety-related announcements.
They include a ban on solo expeditions, stricter guide-to-climber ratios, experience requirements, and new helicopter-based scanners for search and rescue.
"We have made guides mandatory to ensure climbers' safety, particularly [for climbers for peaks above 8,000 metres]," Narayan Prasad Regmi, director general of the Department of Tourism, the government agency responsible for issuing climbing permits, told Kathmandu Post.
But experts say they doubt the rules will be effective.
"I call it 'the silly rule season,'" Mr Arnette said.
"They're never enforced, and if they are put out there, everybody ignores them, especially if it costs them any money."
His scepticism is shared by several of the world's most accomplished mountain guides, record-holding mountaineers, and expedition company directors.
Nepal's Department of Tourism and the Nepal embassy in Canberra did not respond to the ABC's requests for comment on any of the regulations discussed in this story.
No solo climbers (officially)
Adventure Consultants director Guy Cotter is among Everest's most experienced foreign guides, leading one of the very first commercial expeditions to the summit in 1992, and four more times since.
He's also unconvinced that Nepal's recently announced guide minimums and ban on solo climbers will be effective at preventing more deaths.
"There are probably ways around this that would be quite easy for a solo mountaineer with intent to achieve, and that would be to employ a local person but then leave them in a camp while they go and climb solo," Mr Cotter said.
This was how the two Mongolian climbers made their ill-fated ascent in 2024 — paying a guiding company for support at Everest Base Camp before continuing to the summit unassisted.
Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, a world record-holding Nepalese mountaineer and expedition operator, acknowledged Nepal was willing to look the other way on some regulations.
"[It will never be] very difficult to get the permit or to get entry [to Everest] like in Tibet: we are more flexible and our government is more flexible than any other governments," Mr Sherpa said.
While Nepal reportedly clamped down on solo climbers and instituted a guide requirement in 2017, at least six solo expeditions have been documented in the years since.
This suggests the ban was repeatedly evaded or, as Mr Arnette argued, never enforced.
"Nepal said, 'We're going to do this, we're going to make the mountain safer' and every single periodical across the world published that hook, line, and sinker," Mr Arnette said.
Search and RECCO
If Mr Coleman had become separated from his guides on Everest, they would have had multiple tools on-hand to find him.
He carried a GPS tracker and, sewn into his jacket, a RECCO reflector designed to trigger detectors used in search and rescue operations.
Following 2023's record death toll on the mountain, Nepal made it mandatory for climbers to carry at least one of these tools to assist in rescue operations.
Mr Cotter endorsed GPS's usefulness on Everest, particularly avalanche transceivers designed to pinpoint climbers under ice, but acknowledged such devices were complicated and expensive.
The reflectors, on the other hand, he was quick to dismiss.
"RECCO seems like a good idea for the uninitiated but it's probably not gonna be very practical on Mount Everest," he said.
Unlike GPS, RECCO detectors only work within line of sight, a limitation somewhat mitigated by their deployment on newly announced helicopters this year.
"It's been used in Europe in some places for snow avalanches, and there's a very big distinction between snow avalanches and ice avalanches like you get on Mount Everest and the Khumbu icefall," Mr Cotter added.
"The chances of actually picking up a signal from people buried under ice are not that great."
RECCO did not respond to the ABC's request for comment.
Nepal National Mountain Guides Association (NNMGA) president Tul Singh Gurung was among a handful of guides trained to operate the RECCO system in the Himalayas.
At low altitudes, he said it will make a difference.
But in the final push to Everest's 8,849-metre summit, where the vast majority of accidents take place, he said helicopters cannot safely fly.
"Every year … people are dying during the summit day because of lack of oxygen, lack of manpower, sometimes lack of the technical things also," Mr Gurung said.
Thin air and unpredictable weather make it difficult and dangerous to perform helicopter rescues at that altitude.
Mr Cotter estimated 7,000 metres as the typical ceiling for safe helicopter flight in the Himalayas.
Mr Gurung said expedition workers were often asked to carry climbers down to 6,400 metres for evacuation.
"[Near the summit] it's very difficult to evacuate, so you need to use manpower to bring them down to Camp 2."
Not all guides are equal
When Mr Gurung speaks about manpower, he's referring to the hundreds of workers hired to support foreign climbers.
These workers are predominantly Sherpas, an ethnic group descended from Tibetan heritage who live in Nepal's mountainous regions.
Mr Gurung is far more careful about using the term "guide", raising an eyebrow at Nepal's announcement that all expeditions must include one guide for every two climbers.
"This season on Everest there's about 41 [NNMGA-certified] mountain guides," he said.
He said Nepal does not require the hundreds of others working on the peak to be certified by the NNMGA, or any other independent body, in essential mountaineering tasks like fitting oxygen masks or providing first aid.
Despite his concerns, Mr Gurung acknowledged the important role of support workers on the peak.
"You really need them: technical-wise they are very good but number-wise [there are] not enough certified mountain guides because of … the cost factor, it's quite expensive [to hire NNMGA guides]," he said.
Mr Cotter, the director of Adventure Consultants, said Nepal's lack of regulation on guide training had led to under-skilled and ill-equipped staff managing life-or-death situations near the summit.
"Out of the 17 fatalities on Everest that season [in 2023], 11 of them were totally avoidable," he said.
Paying the price
Around the time Nepal's government unveiled its latest batch of safety regulations, Mr Gurung said it rejected NNMGA's suggestions to formally certify guides on Everest and add a second fixed line from Camp 2 to the summit — essentially adding a second lane to the crowded trail.
"Government people are always saying, 'Yeah, we'll try,' and then in the end they said because of financial problems, because [adding a second line is] expensive, we couldn't offer this year, so let's try next year."
What it has promised to implement is a sizeable increase in fees for Everest climbers, hiking the peak season rate from $US11,000 ($17,100) to $US15,000 ($23,300).
Even at the higher rate, this fee is far less than what climbers pay their expedition operator.
Mr Cotter said choosing an operator was also a case of "buyer beware".
"That difference of a few thousand dollars, having qualified people and the appropriate amount of support means the difference between life and death," he said.
Mr Arnette labelled Everest's cheapest expedition operators "the blind leading the blind", saying that if safety concerns aren't acted upon, a vicious cycle of deaths may only strengthen Everest's appeal.
"There's a perverse statistic that every year when more people die, the next year, more people come," he said.
"Everest is a very bright light to a lot of bugs, and the bug knows they're going to die when they land on the light and they go anyway."
While the timing of Mr Coleman's ascent may fit this morbid theory, he argued his motivation as a mountaineer is not limited to Everest.
"I've still got the bug and I would like to say that I'm looking towards K2 to scratch that itch and because I loved Everest so much," he said.
"I'd really like [to climb] those higher peaks — and I would like to see outside of Nepal."
