Te Radar: Everest now the height of fashion

Perhaps the most startling revelation to come out of the Mt Everest death furore is that the base camp for climbers apparently features a mobile brothel. Clearly the summit isn't the only thing being scaled, but what is truly perplexing is why it has to be mobile.

As someone who assiduously avoids stairs the fact that anyone would want to climb a hill, let alone a mountain, never ceases to astound me.

That 10 people have died trying to climb Everest this season alone merely proves what I have always thought: mountaineers are mental.

Of course, people have been dying on mountains since the first person decided to scamper to the top for a look-see.

What would be particularly galling would be to struggle to the summit, only to have the view obscured by clouds.

Mt Everest, once known by the far more factual label "Peak 15", now boasts such a well-worn path to the summit that nearly 3000 people, including the blind, a Playboy cover model, (Poland's Martyna Wojciechowska), and a 70-year-old man, have conquered it.

However, it isn't climbing up that is the real problem, it's getting down. Most mountaineering deaths reportedly happen during the descent. I suspect this is related to the fact that any fall can quite rightly be labelled "a descent".

Obviously worried about this, one man made it down from the summit in a mere 11 minutes, by paragliding. As he swooped down past those still struggling upwards, I'm sure a number thought: "Why didn't I think of that."

Yet others adopt more traditional, if not equally harebrained, schemes to descend. A few days ago another man was killed while trying to ski down from the summit. No doubt there will be a flying fox installed soon.

More disconcerting would be the danger of what Sherpa call "white men's prayer flags". This euphemism rather nicely describes the used toilet paper which blows around the mountain.

Even the height of the mountain is a subject of controversy, with some arguing it is increasing by up to a centimetre a year, while others say that it has decreased by more than a metre in the past 30 years. Either way, it is still rather steep.

While many complain about the nature of the pay-per-climb tourism industry clutters the mountain with aspiring mountaineers, and which has supposedly cheapened the worthiness of the climb by reducing it to a mere vanity pursuit, I say: "So what?"

The same reason that the British climber Mallory gave when asked why he was attempting to conquer the peak still holds true; you do it because "it is there".

And because glossy brochures and the right to brag at dinner parties makes it all the more desirable.

It is little surprise then, and perhaps oddly fitting, that a brothel now adorns the slopes.