Nepal plans to bust fake Everest climbers with GPS trackers

Gallant champions of Everest, all 4000 of you, your achievements will be tarnished no more. All those spoofers and fakers, whose skills lie in deception (read: Photoshop) rather than mountaineering, will soon have their fraudulent claims crushed: Starting next month, the Nepalese government will be trialling a system where all climbers are kitted-out with GPS devices.

The added benefit of this, of course, is extra safety for future mountain climbers. As well as helping rescue teams find troubled climbers, the GPS devices will collect data on the mountains condition, helping authorities and future expeditions predict the chance of poor conditions and mountaineering catastrophes.

Over the past several years, the threat of both mountaineering accidents and climber fraud have been in the spotlight. The mountain only recently reopened after a two-year closure due to avalanches and, in 2014, 16 Nepalese climbers, who were guiding a foreign team climb the mountain, lost their lives to an icefall.

Last year, Indian husband and wife team Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod, had their Everest achievement exposed as a fake after photographers pointed to signs of digital sorcery on the couple's summit photos, while the actual climbers were confused by their absence during any section of the climb.  

The first ever, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary.