On Mountain Climbing

I always wondered what kind of person climbs successfully mountainous heights unimaginable and unattainable by most human beings who are happy and comfortable in their own gardens, back yards, homes, or sitting by a lake, enjoying nature. Their idea of adventure is a hike in the woods, riding a horse, sailing, or swimming.

Most people view such difficult mountain climbing as frivolous, narcissistic, grandiose, selfish, and self-aggrandizing, having one’s moment in the limelight.

But to understand what drives a serious mountaineer, you have to be one, and most people have no such desire.

Jon Krakauer, in his 1997 book, Into Thin Air, explained what mountain climbing is, from his standpoint as a climber and journalist. He wrote that “climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain.” And it is not just any pain, but excruciating pain.

He added that the less virtuous motives are those seeking a minor celebrity, career advancement, an ego massage, ordinary bragging rights, and filthy lucre.”

There is something about being able to say, I’ve climbed Chomolungma, and I reached the top. Chomolungma is the name that the Nepalese call Mount Everest. It is how I learned in my primary school geography class, Mount Chomolungma.

Successful professionals or moneyed individuals want to add this climbing feat to their trophy cases. To succeed in climbing such heights, they must train to endure horrific pain and to be willing to sacrifice their lives for this one unique athletic and endurance trial. They have to be tough, driven, and extremely stoic.

To a large degree, ordinary people believe such individuals to be selfish because they abandon their families for months on end in order to satisfy their need and intense desire to climb into the clouds. And if they ever reach the top of Mount Everest, they know then that they have made it to “the roof of the world.”

And it is the “roof of the world” when below you there is nothing but an icy abyss, and you are standing at a height that most large airplanes fly. It is a rarified atmosphere, thin air lacking oxygen, but also an environment that few dare to experience.

It seems that escalating the tallest mountains in the world gives mountain climbers a temporary sense of satisfaction until it wears off and they are searching for the next challenge.

The sad part of climbing Mount Everest is that a marvel of nature is fast becoming a trashed environment in the eagerness of many to leave their mark and to add their names to historical immortality.

Some climbers never leave the mountain - their frozen bodies rest where they have fallen asleep and froze to death, or inside deep crevasses when they tripped and have fallen to their deaths.

Mount Everest and Pollution

Mount Everest, en.wikipedia.org

Environmentalists have switched their assault on the world economy to a new frontier, previously unaffected by their agenda – peaks, Mount Everest to be more specific, located between China and Nepal in the Himalayas. The 29,029 feet mountain is in danger. What is the crisis? According to the National Geographic team, the mountain is “overcrowded with inexperienced climbers and polluted with waste.”

The nature of the pollution includes human corpses, human excrement, garbage leaking from glaciers, abandoned equipment, and overcrowding. How crowded could it be? Mark Jenkins described at 26,000 feet the dangerous inconvenience of more than 100 climbers moving slowly, forcing everybody else to move at the same pace. 

The humans who perished were left where they died; some were pushed by wind and ice by the side of the trail and some wound up in crevasses. Mark said that the “mountain is mobbed” by inexperienced climbers. “The two standard routes up Everest are not only dangerously crowded but also disgustingly polluted.”

He bemoans the days when in 1963 only six climbers made the arduous trek compared to 2012 when over 500 “mobbed the summit.” The National Geographic team reached the summit on May 25 but was unable to stand due to overcrowding.

Climbing the highest peak is not as glamorous as it used to be, he said. The club is no longer rarified – there are almost 4,000 who successfully reached the peak, some more than once. Guided climbers who pay $30,000-120,000 on expeditions to reach the top have created mounds of human excrement and left behind discarded equipment, other trash, and corpses.

Nepalese Sherpas remove their own trash, leaving little footprint behind. They even pick up some of the garbage left by climbers even though collection work is difficult in sub-zero temperatures.

What kind of micro-management do environmentalists propose in order to save this natural wonder, the mammoth toy that tests the mettle for the few and moneyed?

-          Restrain low budget outfitters by limiting the number of total permits per season and the size of each team (perfect weather data causes crowds on the mountain, all vying to reach the top during the same nice weather conditions)

-          Show respect for the mountain (I would think, that would be hard to do when caught in a storm and trying to survive)

-          Issue ID scanner tags with every permit (QR code) that might save a climber’s life (Would that reduce corpse pollution?)

I would never understand why humans push themselves to test the limit of their survival endurance in unforgiving environments, often paying with their lives, but it is a remarkable accomplishment that few have attained and I am not trying to minimize the extraordinary physical shape these men and women attain and the grueling training and dedication involved.

Previous pioneers have escalated peaks and treacherous territories trying to find new lands, develop maps, rescue lost teams, or to find mines of gold, silver, and other precious resources. They left behind discarded equipment, wagons, tools, ships, tents, and cooking utensils.

I wonder if environmentalists consider mountains polluted if they are covered with wildlife, their poop, and their carcasses. Animals are killed off, die of natural causes, sometimes partially or completely eaten; their remains and fecal matter decompose scattered on the ground. Is that environmentally hazardous to the mountain?

Civilized people love a clean environment and strive to keep it that way. At the end of the day, is it about pollution really and “showing respect for the mountain,” or is it about denying and controlling access to a natural wonder so that future climbers with a big ego, plenty of cash, and a burning desire to reach the peak, survive, often cheat death, and live to brag about it?