Sometimes called the ‘Shira Plateau Route’ the normal route (used by some 95% of operations) has been designed to intersect with Machame from east of the Shira Plateau onwards. This causes crowding at Barranco, a camp which serves 4 of the 6 routes, and places a severe ecological burden on the immediate region during the high season, with as many as 300 climbers and 900 support staff abluting themselves within a few hundred square metres. The climber’s sense of wilderness experience is also compromised during the route’s bottlenecking on the Breach Wall, where more than a thousand people can be required to pass along a trail that is less than a metre wide in places, within some two hours.