China Plans Highway to Mount Everest for Olympics

It would have made life easier, though a lot less adventurous, for Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. China is to start building a highway to Mount Everest as part of preparations for next year's Olympics, the state media reported yesterday.

Running up to the base camp at 5,200 meters (17,000 ft), the highest of high roads will be a tarmac route with guardrails running through one of the world's most remote regions.

Xinhua news agency said the 150m yuan (£10m) project would start next week and take 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.

"The highway will become the major route for tourists and mountaineers who are crowding on to Mt Qomolangma, known in the west as Mt 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 reach the peak of Mt 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. China says it has ruled Tibet for centuries, although many Tibetans say their homeland was essentially an independent state for most of that time.

The day before the route of the torch was announced, five Americans unfurled banners at a base camp calling for an independent Tibet. The five, from the Students for a Free Tibet group, were briefly held and then expelled from China.

Environmentalists fear the development of this high-altitude location will have a calamitous effect on its ecology.

But a local climbing official praised the plan. "It is a good thing for the local development and the local people, because more tourists and mountain climbers will be attracted to the region," said Zhang Mingxing, general secretary of the Tibetan Mountaineering Association.

"The road now is very shabby. People have to spend one day to get to the base from the foot of the mountain. Mountain climbers will be able to save their energy for climbing," Zhang said.

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.