"Because it's there."

When asked in 1923 why he wanted to climb Qomolangma, known in the West as Mount Everest, this is said to have been George Mallory's answer.

Ninety years later however - 60 since Sir Edmund Hillary made the first successful summit - Qomolangma is not what it once was.

As the availability of skilled Sherpa guides has increased, so too have tourist expeditions to the top, but this increased commercialization has come at a cost far beyond the 300,000 yuan ($49,008) paid, on average, by each climber. Hordes of inexperienced climbers have left trails of trash, environmental destruction and even corpses upon the world's tallest peak.

According to a report in the UK-based Independent, 120 corpses of mountaineers remain unrecovered on the peak.

Whilst 2013 has been a reasonably safe year thus far for climbers, 2012 marked a nasty year with 10 left dead, according to a report in the Toronto Star. As the climbing industry booms, particularly on the Nepalese side of the border where restrictions on climbers are less strict, many are asking what this means for the future of tourism on the mountain.