Mount Everest (C), the world highest peak, and other peaks of the Himalayan range are seen from air during a mountain flight from Kathmandu April 24, 2010. 
 
 The flowing waters of Niagara Falls turn to ice as the temperature drops. 
 
 KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal will cut climbing fees for Mount Everest to lure more mountaineers to the world's highest peak, already overcrowded during the peak climbing season. 
 
 Hundreds of foreign climbers, each paying thousands of dollars, flock to the 8,850-metre (29,035 feet) Everest summit during the main climbing season stretching from March to May. 
 
 Under existing rules, Nepal charges $25,000 per climber as a licence fee, or royalty. But a group of seven people can secure a permit for $70,000, a practice officials say encourages climbers to form big groups. 
 
 Tourism Ministry official Tilakram Pandey said each climber will be charged $11,000 from next year to end the practice. 
 
 "The change in royalty rates will discourage artificially formed groups, where the leader does not even know some of the members in him own team," Pandey said. 
 
 "It will promote responsible and serious climbers." 
 
 He said the new rates will apply for the peak season on the Southeast Ridge, or South Col, route pioneered by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa in 1953. 
 
 Permits for other routes and for the rest of the year, when the mountain is virtually deserted, will cost as little as $2,500 to encourage off-season climbing, officials said. 
 
 But experts said most mountaineers would still favour the spring season, because of warmer weather and more daylight, and the standard route. 
 
 Fees for hundreds of smaller peaks have also been changed. 
 
 ENTICING MORE CLIMBERS 
 
 Ang Tshering, who runs a hiking agency providing logistics to mountaineers, said incomes would not be affected as more climbers would be enticed to come despite the crowded mountain. 
 
 "Since more people will go to remotely located mountains, locals will get jobs and income," he said. 
 
 More than 4,000 people have climbed Mount Everest since the historic 1953 ascent. Nearly 250 have died on its slopes. 
 
 Climbing historian Elizabeth Hawley said Everest was "terribly crowded" during the peak season. And allowing in those with no experience in serious climbing raised accident risks. 
 
 Sushil Ghimire, the Tourism Ministry's most senior official, said the government was considering regulations obliging aspirants to climb lower peaks before attempting Everest. 
 
 With the rise in the number of climbers, pollution concerns have also increased. 
 
 But lower portions of Everst have undergone a clean-up as foreign and Nepali climbers have picked tonnes of discarded decades-old garbage - food cans, plastic, oxygen cylinders, torn tents, ropes and ladders, as well as human waste. 
 
 "There is still some garbage at higher altitudes and that is being collected by climbers during expeditions," said Dawa Steven Sherpa, whose expeditions have collected 15 tonnes of rubbish since 2008. 
 
 He said better management of routes - fixing separate ropes for ascents and descents, and spreading permits over time - had helped reduce crowding last year. 
 
 Nepal, home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, has more than 2,000 Himalayan peaks and 326 are open to foreign climbers. Mountaineering is an important component of tourism that makes up about 4 percent of the impoverished nation's GDP. 
 
 (Editing by Ron Popeski) ||||| News that the Nepalese government is lowering the fee for climbing Mount Everest has set the mountaineering world abuzz. Last week, Nepal's Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation announced that it would cut the fee it charges during the spring season from $25,000 to $11,000 per climber. 
 
 Though still not cheap, the new fee structure would appear to make an Everest expedition somewhat more affordable and thereby available to more climbers. But veteran Himalayan guides say a closer look at the numbers tells a different story and raises old questions about safety and the economic health of the area surrounding the world's tallest mountain. 
 
 Since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay stood atop Mount Everest's 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) peak in 1953, more than 4,000 people have followed. Many have paid upwards of $50,000 for the privilege. Ever since commercial guiding became popular on Everest during the 1990s, purists have complained that only the very rich can afford to scale the mountain. 
 
 Although there are numerous established climbing routes on Everest, which straddles the Nepal-China (Tibet) border, two routes see 99 percent of the traffic. The North Col route, which originates on the Tibetan side, is regulated by the Chinese government. It costs about one-third the Nepal price but requires more technical climbing near the summit and is attempted by far fewer climbers than the Southeast Ridge route, which rises from the Nepalese side. 
 
 View Images 
 
 In the past, Nepalese government fees for climbing via the Southeast Ridge during the spring were based on a sliding scale, with the cost per climber dropping to $10,000 per person once a team had seven members or more (up to the maximum of 15). Very few climbers paid the full $25,000 price tag. Instead, small climbing teams would bind together under the umbrella of one government permit. Beginning in 2015, when the new fees take effect, the Nepalese price for foreign climbers in groups on Everest will actually increase from $10,000 to $11,000. 
 
 Speaking to Reuters on Monday, Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation spokesperson Tilakram Pandey said, "The change in royalty rates will discourage artificially formed groups, where the leader does not even know some of the members of the team. It will promote responsible and serious climbers." 
 
 Critics Say Could Add to Crowding 
 
 Yes and no, say veterans of the Nepal climbing scene. For experienced alpinists who want to climb Everest as a part of a small, well-acquainted team, the change keeps costs down, although all teams—no matter their size—will still be required to hire a government liaison officer for $2,500 and pay $500 to $600 per climber for the "ice doctors," specially trained Sherpas who install the ladders and fixed lines up through the treacherous Khumbu Icefall. 
 
 However, critics of the plan say the pricing structure might encourage less experienced climbers to form small teams as well and could add to further crowding on the mountain. "If it increases the number of camps at Base Camp, subsequently increasing the need for services, from rescue helicopters to support staff, the overall impact to the upper Khumbu region will be negative," says Conrad Anker, who has summited Everest three times and co-founded the Khumbu Climbing Center, which trains Sherpas in technical mountaineering skills and safety. "Every place on Earth has a carrying capacity, and Everest is already over its limit." 
 
 To increase the mountain's carrying capacity would require significant investment in infrastructure and government services. Although the Nepalese government collects more than $3 million in Everest climbing fees every year, little of this cash returns to the region for conservation, regulation, or resource management. 
 
 "This increase in price will have little effect on the commercial guiding operations on Everest," says Russell Brice, owner and operator of Himalayan Experience, which has put more clients on the summit than any other guide service. "Frankly, an increase of $1,000 is overdue, given that inflation in Nepal is running at 17 percent. Of course, we wish that this money would go back to the Khumbu, but it won't. The government is simply too corrupt." 
 
 While one intended effect of the new climbing fees is to reduce the number of climbers on Everest during the popular spring season by significantly reducing the fees for climbing in the less popular fall and summer seasons, Brice is skeptical this will make any difference. 
 
 "The chances of summiting Everest in the fall, with deep snow, colder temperatures, and shorter days, is significantly less than in the spring," he says. "Climbing in the summer or winter is even worse. No one will want to decrease their chances of success." 
 
 View Images To save on fees, small teams often climb together under one government permit. Photograph by Andy Bardon, National Geographic 
 
 Other Measures, Other Peaks 
 
 Brice does commend other measures that the Nepalese government is implementing this year. In the past, the government liaison officers typically made perfunctory appearances at Base Camp to check in with their assigned teams before returning to their offices in the lowlands. This spring, nine liaison officers will be stationed at Base Camp, presumably to help monitor waste management, garbage collection, and traffic along the route—vexing issues that Everest watchers complain have long been ignored by the government. Brice and Anker are hopeful that this contingent could form the basis of a ranger system, something they and other veteran climbers have long called for. 
 
 Lost in the discussion of Everest is the news that the revised pricing structure also will reduce climbing fees for other mountains in Nepal—which in addition to Everest is home to seven other 26,000-foot (8,000-meter) peaks. Furthermore, mountains that were previously off-limits now will be open to climbing. In an ever-shrinking world, this comes as welcome news for those who long for unexplored valleys and unconquered summits. ||||| Image caption Everest's slopes are becoming ever more crowded, according to officials 
 
 Nepal has decided to deploy a team of security officials at Everest base camp, in a bid to avert brawls between climbers, officials say. 
 
 Last April a fight erupted between European mountaineers and a group of Sherpas at 7,470m (24,508ft). 
 
 Although that dispute was eventually resolved, officials say Everest's slopes are becoming more crowded. 
 
 An office staffed by army and police will open in April at Everest base camp as the climbing season gets under way. 
 
 Nepali tourism ministry official Dipendra Poudel told BBC Nepali's Surendra Phuyal that the security team of nine would comprise three officers each from Nepal's army, police and armed police force. 
 
 He added that they would be assisted by officials from the tourism ministry. 
 
 Our correspondent says that last year's brawl between a group of European climbers and Sherpas raised concerns about the safety and security of climbers. 
 
 The conflict - which made headlines around the world - was allegedly over the fixing of ropes on the slope. 
 
 Officials say the new office will also be able to help climbers in distress, clean the mountain and enforce climbing rules, the Associated Press news agency reports. 
 
 More than 3,000 people have scaled Mount Everest since it was first conquered by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. 
 
 Straddling Nepal and China, the world's highest mountain has an altitude of 8,848m (29,029ft).
– Come spring, Everest's base camp will be home to a security team designed to prevent brawls like this one. It will be made up of three officers each from Nepal's army, police, and armed police force, assisted by tourism officials, the BBC has learned. The idea of a government team was first floated last summer, and reports say officials will begin manning the post in March or April—a year after a fight broke out between climbers and Sherpas some 20,000 feet in the air. "This will make it easy to resolve any conflict," a tourism ministry official told Reuters. "The presence of security officials at the base camp will give a psychological feeling to climbers that they are safe." Reuters notes that, previously, each climbing team was assigned a government employee, but those liaisons often declined to head to the 17,550-foot base camp with their team. The government officials will also help enforce rules, rescue climbers, and clean up the garbage that's piling up. Meanwhile, National Geographic notes Nepal is dramatically lowering Everest's climbing fee from $25,000 to $11,000 per climber. The move eliminates the rule that allowed seven climbers to get a permit for just $70,000, and will be put in place in 2015 to "discourage artificially formed groups, where the leader does not even know some of the members of the team," an official told Reuters. "It will promote responsible and serious climbers."