So Sorry

While I should have been doing something else, I happened to end up reading about Mount Everest. I think it happened because a headline about the recent K2 disaster caught my eye.

K2 is in Pakistan. It’s the world’s second-highest mountain, but it’s harder to climb than Everest. One reason is that the surrounding terrain is farther from the summit. I guess that makes sense. You could have a plain at 25,000 feet and then a 4,000-foot climb, and it would be easier than climbing to 28,000 feet from 5,000.

I’m always horrified when I read about mountaineering. I hate the cold. I’m not in love with heights. I can’t imagine deliberately injecting myself into an environment where, if something goes wrong, I could lose my fingers and toes. Apart from that, it looks like a filthy business. How do you wash your hands at 20,000 feet? When you relieve yourself, do you just keep the residue on your hands and gloves until you get home? Probably. And what if you’re taking a popular route, like one of the more touristy Everest paths? People bag their waste these days, but that wasn’t always true. There must be a lot of frozen filth up there.

Another type of trailside debris that would be troubling: frozen bodies. There are about 120 dead bodies up there. They’re heavy, so they’re not easy to bring down. And some can’t be found. One of those is a guy I went to high school with. I was told that he didn’t listen when they told him to stay with the sherpas. Wandered off and presumably fell into a crevasse. After what I’ve seen about this place, well, first of all, I wouldn’t go. But hypothetically, if I were there, you better believe I’d treat every word that fell from my guides’ lips as though it were gospel. Maybe Everest seemed safe to him because thousands of tourists had been to the top. On the other hand, some people just don’t like taking advice. Maybe the same thing that makes you risk your life on a frozen mountain will also drive you to ignore safety warnings. A few added risks make for a better story when you get home.

You never see the bodies when you see Everest on TV or in a magazine, but various websites say some of them are right on the trails and that you have to step over them to get to the top. Imagine what it has to be like for people who know them and who continue to climb. Imagine going to work every day and seeing a dead co-worker sitting in his chair as you walk to your office. And the families! It has to be very unpleasant, knowing that tourists are parading past the stiff, dried-out bodies of your loved ones every year.

I just read about an Austrian who died on Everest. His name was Markus Kronthaler, and his brother Georg led an expedition just to retrieve his body. Markus died near the top, and his brother and his porters had to get close to the top to retrieve him, but they refused to climb a few extra meters and take the summit. They did that to make a point. Shockingly, many people who climb Everest feel no obligation to help others who are in trouble. Because it would endanger them as well? Partly. But also because…climbing Mount Everest is expensive. How expensive? One outfit charges $65,000 per person. That does not include airfare or your personal equipment, so call it, what? Maybe $85,000? I don’t get it; I don’t know what you could do for another person over the course of a few days that would justify a price like that, but I suppose people are willing to pay. Maybe it’s a supply and demand thing; lots of rich people want to go, and there are only so many spots. And it looks like one result is that guides are reluctant to stop and help climbers in trouble. The people who pay them get angry, and it hurts business! So some leave people to die, and this is considered acceptable.

Even worse, some people pose for photos with the dead, and some corpses have been stripped of various items by souvenir hunters.

Imagine a similar situation down here near sea level. Let’s say you go diving with a group. And you get your hand stuck in some coral. And while you’re breathing the last of your air, a guide swims by and ignores you, because the people paying him will be angry if they don’t get to dance with the tame sting rays or whatever. That is essentially the moral structure we’re talking about. I suppose it would happen regularly, if a scuba excursion generated $65,000 per customer. Unbelievable.

Markus Kronthaler couldn’t be helped, but his brother felt that leaving him up there unnecessarily, in plain view of other climbers, reflected a very poor code of ethics. So he spent money on a climb, and he went and got the body, and he refused to climb to the summit. Good for him.

One experienced alpinist has said that it’s unfair to take the risk of climbing Everest and expect to be rescued. Does that really make sense? Isn’t it better to say that it’s wrong to blow $65,000 on an ego trip, unless you’re prepared to abandon it in order to save a life? Think of the two sides of the equation. If you keep climbing, what do you get? A story to tell your friends at cocktail parties. What does the person you didn’t help get? Frozen extremities and slow death from hypothermia, plus the knowledge that no one tried to help. Seems like a very small benefit with a very high price.

I think I’ll stay down here with the oxygen and the grocery stores and the ambulances and cable TV. If other people want to pay sherpas and guides to carry their inexperienced selves up Everest, that’s up to them, but there are a long list of things I don’t want to happen to me, and one of them, I’m afraid, is freezer burn.