Mera Peak or Island Peak: Which Nepal Trekking Peak Should You Climb First in 2026?

If your climbing résumé is mostly long, high-altitude trekking, climb Mera Peak first. At 6,476m it is Nepal's highest trekking peak, but the final push to the summit is a straightforward glacier walk on a moderate slope, not a technical climb — the challenge is altitude and stamina, not rope skills. If you have already used a jumar and crampons and want a short, sharp alpine test, climb Island Peak instead: at 6,189m it is 287m lower than Mera, but its summit day includes a fixed-rope headwall around 45 to 55 degrees that turns back more climbers than the thin air does.

Same permit fee, very different climb

Since Nepal's climbing-royalty overhaul took effect on 1 September 2025, every standard NMA trekking peak, Mera and Island included, carries the same government fee: $350 per climber in spring, dropping to $175 in autumn and winter. Price is not what should decide between them. Mera sits in the Hinku Valley south of Everest, reached via a Makalu Barun National Park permit plus a local rural-municipality fee; its three summit points (Mera North, Central and South) top out on a broad snow dome you climb roped but essentially walking, provided the weather holds. Island Peak sits inside Sagarmatha National Park, a short detour from the Everest Base Camp trail near Chhukung. Its summit ridge narrows to an exposed, fixed-rope scramble above a crevassed glacier, and most operators, us included, run a rope-and-ladder skills day at base camp before the summit push.

Two peaks from the same nine days in 1953

Eric Shipton named Island Peak in 1952, after it looked to him like an island in a sea of ice viewed from Dingboche. The following year, a rope from the British Everest expedition, including Tenzing Norgay, Charles Evans, Alfred Gregory and Charles Wylie, climbed it as an acclimatisation exercise before their own summit attempt; it was formally renamed Imja Tse in the early 1980s. Nine days earlier, on 20 May 1953, Colonel Jimmy Roberts and Sherpa Sen Tenzing made the first ascent of Mera Peak while Roberts wound down his supply duties for the same Everest expedition — a quiet first ascent now credited as one of the seeds of Nepal's entire commercial trekking industry.

Source: Nepal Mountaineering Association, official foreign-climber service charges.

Cover photo: Mountaineer via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).