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NEW DELHI (Reuters)-When Sir Edmund Hillary reached the roof of the world in 1953, the beekeeper from New Zealand pressed a crucifix into the snow as a sign of respect.

But 50 years after Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood at the top of Mount Everest, the question is: Has the world's highest mountain lost its mystique and become just another tourist destination?

"It's rather regrettable that the value of climbing Mount Everest has diminished," Japan's Junko Tabei, who in 1975 became the first woman to reach the summit, told Reuters.

"The huge number of climbers has made climbing Mount Everest more dangerous and has also made the mountain less sacred."

Tabei is not alone.

As Nepal gears up to mark the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of the 8,850-metre (29,035-feet) mountain straddling the border between Nepal and China, many climbers scoff that Everest has become too commercialised.

They say there are too many climbers, many of them inexperienced clients on guided expeditions, and the mountain has become a place of record-book stunts - the youngest, the oldest, the first ski descent and the first to snowboard from the summit.

"Everest has become more commercial now," Jamling Norgay, Tenzing Norgay's son and an experienced climber himself, told Reuters. "A lot of companies organise trips to Everest. They often take novice climbers who haven't even put a crampon on. "As a result, the mystique has gone. People look at it as just another mountain."

The number of climbers on Everest - which locals call Chomolungma or Mother Goddess of the World - has leapt since the 1980s when Nepal opened the mountain to unlimited teams.

Between 1953 and 1973, only 38 people reached the summit. But in 2001 alone, 182 people made it to the roof of the world and 1,200 have done so since Hillary's accomplishment.

This year, a record 1,000 climbers plan to make the forbidding journey through yawning crevasses and giant blocks of ice to get to the summit of Everest.

Purists say today, sherpas do everything for wealthy clients, short of carrying them up on a chair. They fix ropes and ladders across perilous crevasses, clear the route for them and carry their climbing paraphernalia.

"Earlier, climbers did everything on their own. Today, they have 20 people to help them - sherpas in front and at the back to carry their cylinders and other things," said Colonel Narendra Kumar, part of an Indian army expedition to Everest in 1965.

"Earlier, it took about 90 days to climb Everest. Today, you can do it in about 45 days. They fly you straight to Lukla where it's just four days to base camp. As a result, climbers are not acclimatised," he said.

Critics say many people on guided expeditions are climbers who have done the bulk of their training on StairMasters and treadmills rather than actual peaks.

"We've got the big E figured out, we've got it totally wired," a guide told Jon Krakauer, who wrote "Into Thin Air", an account of the worst accident on Everest in 1996 when eight people lost their lives.

"I'm telling you, we've built a yellow brick road to the summit."

On May 10, 1996, eight climbers from three expeditions were killed during descents not far below the Everest summit when blizzards struck the Himalayan peak.

Some climbers say 1996 was an accident waiting to happen.

"The climbers were too inexperienced and too slow. It's because of all this commercialisation - the people who died were clients who paid $65,000 to climb the mountain," Jamling said.

However, not everybody agrees that Everest has become a bit of a tourist circus. "The 'circus' is more due to the fact that people seem to be trying to outdo each other to gain sponsors and/or gain notoriety. For example, The Fastest, The Youngest, The Oldest," said Ed Viesturs, a U.S. mountain guide from Seattle.

"The crowds have changed the mystique. But that's the way it is. There are more people everywhere - Grand Canyon, Yosemite, The Alps etc," said the climber who has scaled Everest five times.

Other climbers defend the increase in the number of climbers as a result of better equipment and gear, but say none of this has made climbing the mountain any easier. "But largely the mountain is just as hard to climb today as it was 50 years ago," U.S. mountain guide Eric Simonson said.

"Everest has many faces, and ultimately summit success boils down to being in the right place at the right time with the right equipment and experience at one's side."

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