In recent days, on the eve of the opening of the high season for climbing to the summit of Everest (8,848 meters above sea level), in Nepal, information has circulated around the world that mountaineers were being poisoned by their guides in collusion with air rescue companies to defraud insurance companies, in a scheme that would have generated around US$20 million (R$103,000,000 at approximate exchange rates). Added to this was a long report from the specialized publication Climbing Magazine stating that the Nepalese government was creating a fee for wealthy and impatient climbers through which they would have priority in leaving camps. They could thus avoid the long queues recorded every year on the final stretch of the Hillary Step, which generate absurd photos of hooded citizens in the middle of the death zone, where the air is so thin that even thinking sacrifices — imagine the reader standing still just waiting for the colorful jumpsuit at the top to take the obligatory selfie to post on social media.
According to the publication, the VIP pass, called FastClimb Premium Summit+ (or something like Premium Fast Climb to the Summit), would add US$12,000 (R$62,000) to the already hefty US$11,000 (R$57,000) charged by the local government for permission to access the world’s peak this season. However, the next day, Climbing Magazine added a warning at the top of the text: it was an April 1st lie. No, there will be no privileges for the millionaire class. Not this one, at least.
But, if the VIP pass story was a joke, the news of redemption fraud was serious — it’s just not new. According to guides and experienced mountaineers who took to the internet to clarify, this type of complaint has been circulating since at least before the pandemic, coinciding with the exponential increase in demand for experience on the supreme summit and the increasing influx of people who are not as prepared as would be expected. The spice of the season, the poisoning that ill-intentioned guides would be inflicting on unwary people, according to the experts interviewed by the column, has no proof whatsoever and reeks of intrigue.
According to Brazilian mountaineer Pedro Hauck, who has been taking climbers and hikers along the most demanding paths and mountains for decades, the symptoms described as “poisoning” are nothing more than those that characterize the well-known “mountain sickness”: severe headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and gastrointestinal disorders of various calibers, caused by the region’s extreme altitude. It may even happen that these problems worsen to the point of requiring extraction of the affected person, but the vast majority of cases are resolved by descending to lower altitudes for better acclimatization or a prepared first aid kit, a mandatory item for any adventurer.
“Talking to friends and Sherpas who live in Nepal, no one knew of any proof that this poisoning occurred,” explains Hauck, who made a long video on Instagram warning against the exaggerations of the rumors. “The symptoms of mountain sickness are the same as food poisoning, I had clients who felt sick and said it was something they had eaten, but then it would affect everyone who ate the same thing, so that’s not the case”, he adds.
For another expert on the Himalayan trails, Manoel Morgado, the first Brazilian to complete the Great Himalayan Trail alone, 1,425 kilometers long, the poisoning version really doesn’t make sense, “it seems very forced”. But he confirms that fraud is news that comes from afar. “It is said that small companies, which sell a trekking package to Everest base camp for US$ 1,500 and make US$ 200 in profit, suddenly take the opportunity to receive US$ 1,000 for a rescue, claiming that the customer had a lot of headache and they had convinced him to return, or even when they arrived at the base camp, they suggested to this customer that, instead of returning on foot, he could return by helicopter, faster and more comfortable, and that he would ‘arrange’ this with the agency”, he reports.
The problem pointed out by both Morgado and Hauck is that this type of Nepalese “way” ends up, in fact, making insurance taken out for the country more expensive, which is no longer cheap due to the difficulties involved in a rescue in those latitudes.
And mountaineer Moeses Fiamoncini agrees with them, also a good expert on the high mountains of the Himalayas, the first Brazilian to climb Broad Peak (8,051 meters) in 2022 and one of those who helped identify the place where Indian Anurag Maloo fell in Anapurna (8,091 meters), in April 2023, miraculously rescued alive. “There has always been ransom fraud, but financial fraud,” he says. “Even hospitals all said they were involved in the scheme, but the story of the poisoning serves more to tarnish the names of Nepali companies, which would be of interest to large foreign agencies”, he adds.
The column attempted to contact the Nepalese embassy and the country’s tourism bodies, but received no response at the time of writing this text.
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