The step, which lies 29,000ft up, is the final obstacle for climbers on their way to the summit. But, with hundreds of mountaineers attempting to scale Everest each year, it has become something of a bottleneck.
Only one person can attempt the step at a time, which can lead to long delays on a treacherous part of the mountain.
Now, almost exactly 60 years after Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the top, a new plan has been mooted to install a ladder, the Guardian reports.
"We are now discussing putting a ladder on the Hillary Step but it is obviously controversial," said Dawa Steven Sherpa, a senior member of the Expedition Operators Association in Nepal, told the paper.
"To make the climbing easier, that would be wrong. But this is a safety feature," he said.
The plan has received support from Frits Vrijlandt, the president of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation. He said the ladder could be used to descend the peak, so that it does not affect the difficulty of the climb.