A common gripe one hears at base camp is over the cost of access to Mount Everest. The Tibet Mountaineering Association now charges around $5,000 per mountaineer climbing toward the peak.

“They are making millions here,” said Werner De Jong, a Dutch guide who was camped a couple of tents over from me at an Everest Base Camp site.

“All you get is a stinky toilet. Look at how bad it is,” he said.

That’s a picture of the latrine at the base camp above. It’s bad, but it is a palace compared to some of the rural outhouses I’ve seen in China.

In fact, Nepal charges twice as much if you climb Everest’s south face. And neither Tibet nor Nepal will go rescue you if you get in trouble on the mountain.

De Jong said the Tibetan Mountaineering Association was so disorganized that he had to produce his own bank statement showing a transfer of some $50,000 for permits for his expedition’s climbers.

So is it wrong of Nepal and Tibet to charge so much? I personally don’t think so. It’s their mountain. The market obviously bears the cost; otherwise the base camp wouldn’t be so full of tents right now as the 2007 climbing season begins.

Side note: One service you do get on Everest is mobile phone service. My China mobile phone worked almost everywhere. Although it seemed to be good only for voice, not data link. My computer GPRS service didn’t work, so I couldn’t blog directly from the mountain. Moreover, I didn’t have backup cell phone batteries. So imagine my frustration as I started to get call after call about upcoming press conferences in Beijing. I even got a call on Everest from a telemarketer for China Mobile itself. The calls would usually end up like this: “What? You’re where? Mount Everest?” click.