Those wishing to climb Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, may see some drastic changes in their plans. Nepal’s government is reportedly contemplating if the base camp should be moved in the next few years.

The consideration to relocate the base camp has been credited to the significant change in climatic conditions in Nepal. Taranath Adhikari, the Director-General of Nepal’s Department of Tourism, said that the base camp faces some risk from the melt of the nearby Khumbu glacier.

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“We have received recommendations from numerous stakeholders to relocate the base camp. While no decisions have been made yet, we are taking these suggestions very seriously”, the Nepal Tourism head told CNN in a statement.

No official decision has been taken on this so far as the matter came up in an informal discussion during a meeting of the tourism department, according to director Surya Prasad Upadhyaya. A possible new location has also not been finalised.

Upadhyaya added that the current base camp is becoming unsafe due to the rapidly thinning glacier owing to the impact of global warming, news agency PTI reported.

The base camp is situated at an altitude of 5,364-metre on the Khumbu glacier. More than 1,500 people gather at the base camp every climbing season, which usually falls in May and June.

In February, researchers in Nepal warned that the highest glacier on the top of Mount Everest could disappear by the middle of this century as the 2,000-year-old ice cap on the world’s tallest mountain is thinning at an alarming rate.

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The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) previously said that Everest has been losing ice significantly since the late 1990s, citing a research report.

In December 2002, China and Nepal announced that the world’s highest peak is now taller by 86 centimeters after they remeasured Mt Everest at 8,848.86 meters, over six decades after India conducted the previous measurement in 1954.