Trek Guide
Island Peak, Mera and Lobuche East need mountaineering cover to 6,500m. A tier that stops at 6,000m does not reach any of them.
By Bishnu Adhikari · Aug 29, 2026
If you are climbing Island Peak, Mera or Lobuche East, your trekking insurance almost certainly does not cover you — not because of the altitude, but because you will be roped up, in crampons, holding an ice axe. Insurers sell trekking and mountaineering as…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Equipment and technique, not height. The line insurers draw is roughly this: if you are walking on a trail in boots, that is trekking. If you are using ropes, crampons, an ice axe, a harness or a jumar, that is mountaineering, and it is a different tier at a…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Here is the half nobody warns you about, and it is the reason to check a number rather than a tier name. Several specialists cap mountaineering cover at exactly 6,000m — which is below all three of these summits, by 119, 165 and 470 metres. Every figure below…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
You are buying cover for two weeks at altitude, not for one summit morning. This is the part people forget when they compare quotes. Island Peak and Lobuche East are reached through the Khumbu on the same trail as Everest Base Camp, sleeping at Dingboche and…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Thinner than you would like, and that is a physical limit rather than an insurance one. Helicopters in Nepal fly mostly from first light to late morning, are grounded by cloud, and rarely operate above about 6,000m — which is at or below the summits of all…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
An NMA climbing permit costs US$350 per person in spring and US$175 in autumn, winter and summer , according to the association's own published schedule of service charges for foreign climbers, and Island Peak, Mera and Lobuche East all sit in that standard…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
On a trekking peak, the mid-tier is the right answer and the expedition tier is a waste of your money. We would rather tell you that than watch you buy an 8,000m product for a 6,189m mountain. Two genuinely cheap routes are worth checking before you pay a…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Only if the policy names mountaineering or climbing with ropes, crampons and ice axe as a covered activity, and its altitude band clears the summit — 6,165m on the NMA's permit tariff, 6,189m as the industry usually prints it. Ask for a 6,500m mountaineering…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
The framework this page sits inside — limits, exclusions and how claims are paid. Which of the two makes a better first 6,000m climb, and why. Route, preparation, permit and what summit day actually involves. Why machines rarely fly above 6,000m, and what…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Plan your trek
NMA-certified guides · permits sorted · 5,000+ treks since 1998.
Free guide
Permits, costs, seasons and routes — the essentials we send every traveller, plus a free, no-obligation trip quote.
↑ Swipe up
Read the full report and grab the free Nepal Trek Insider Guide — or ask our Pokhara team for a tailored, no-obligation quote.
Read more & get the free guide Plan my trip — free quote