China Makes the High Road to Everest

It would have made life easier - but a lot less adventurous - for Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. China is about to start building a highway to Mount Everest as part of its preparations for next year's Olympic Games, the state media reported today.

Running up to the base camp at 5,200 meters altitude, the highest of high roads will be a black-top tarmac route with guardrails running through what until now has been one of the world's most remote regions.

Xinhua news agency said the 150 million yuan (£10m) project would start next week and take about four months to complete. Its initial purpose is to smooth the route for the Olympic torch relay, but it will later be used to develop Everest into a resort.

"On completion, the highway will become the major route for tourists and mountaineers who are crowding onto Mount Qomolangma, known in the west as Mount Everest, in ever larger numbers," Xinhua reported.

In keeping with its towering ambitions for next year's Beijing Games, China has designed the most far-reaching Olympic torch route in history.

The 85,000-mile, 130-day relay will cross five continents and scale the 8,850-meter peak of Mount Everest.

It is likely to be controversial. Tibetan rights campaigners dispute China's claims to the Himalayan region, which People's Liberation Army troops occupied in 1950. Environmentalists fear the development of this high-altitude location will have a calamitous effect on its ecology.

The relay plans have already run into problems with regional fault lines. Taiwan refused to let the torch pass through its territory, a move that enraged Beijing, which claims that the self-ruled island is a renegade province.