Everest permit dodger says he was ready to face jail

Kathmandu : A South African caught attempting to climb Mount Everest without an $11,000 permit said Thursday that he couldn't afford the hefty fee but had always planned to turn himself in and serve jail time as punishment.

Ryan Sean Davy was arrested on Tuesday after handing himself into authorities in Kathmandu, a week after he was found hiding in a cave near Everest base camp without a permit.

He told AFP at a police detention centre that he knew he would have to eventually turn himself in -- and likely face jail time -- because he wanted to release a film and book about his Everest adventure.

"I realised that I would have to turn myself in to make it all legal, do the jail time because I can't afford the permit," said the 43-year-old, who now faces a $22,000 fine.

Davy, who has no prior mountaineering experience, was attempting to scale the world's highest peak alone and with limited equipment -- and hoped to save the lives of other climbers along the way.

Before he was caught he had managed to climb as high as camp one at an altitude of 6,000 metres (nearly 20,000 feet), despite not having all the proper equipment.

To get there he had to cross the treacherous Khumbu icefall, a huge stretch of glacier containing deep crevasses that must be crossed by ladder.

"I had some of the gear, not all of it, so there were some really interesting, scary parts," he said.

Davy recently hit a low point in his life after ploughing all this savings into two feature films that never got off the ground, but felt he could pick himself up if he was able to help someone else.

"I just really wanted to find some sort of fulfilment by helping somebody, whatever the consequence was," he said, sitting in a small office at a police station in Kathmandu wearing a green t-shirt, boardshorts and flip-flops.

"I couldn't figure out what to do and then I realised if there's one place in the world where there's a guarantee that I could help people then that's Mount Everest," he said.

Davy said he was motivated by the controversial death of British mountaineer David Sharp near the summit of Everest in 2006.

Sharp's death sparked a heated debate within the climbing community because a number of climbers passed him during their ascent to the summit but did not stop to help.

"I'd learned about the David Sharp scenario, where a lot of the climbers got summit fever and a lot of the climbers walked right past a dying man. So I was worried maybe the same thing would happen," Davy said.