[A startling picture of overcrowding near the
summit shows the peril of turning the mountain into a form of adventure tourism]
By
Peter Beaumont
 |
|
Nirmal
Purja’s picture of the overcrowded approach to the summit of Everest
last
week. Photograph: Nirmal Purja/Project Possible/AFP
|
Mountaineering is a physical pursuit
demanding an affinity for suffering. Where it is cerebral is in its requirement
of good judgment, most importantly in extreme situations when the mind is most
clouded and consequences of bad decision-making tend to multiply.
Considering risks requires being honest with
yourself. At what climbers call the objective level, that involves assessing
dangers you may encounter – weather, avalanches, poor rock, even whether there
will be overcrowding on your route.
Subjectively, it means asking yourself
searching questions. Are you capable of safely attempting your objective? Even
if you are, will you be tempted to push on for the wrong reasons – because of
ego, because you fear failure, or because you have spent large sums on the trip
of a lifetime? For a climber, looking at Nirmal Purja’s picture last week of
the queues close to Everest’s summit – delays that may have contributed to
several deaths – is something that inspires dread.
It depicts an anxiety-inducing conga line in
the death zone above 8,000 metres, where the body can’t properly function.
Where movement forwards and backwards is seriously impeded. In a sport where
efficient autonomous movement is regarded as crucial to safety, you want to
ask, why would you put yourself in this position? The answer is to be found, in
large part, in the commodification of the world’s highest mountain.
Everest has become largely detached from the
rest of climbing and mountaineering. It has become a trophy experience, drawing
too many otherwise without much interest in the sport, validated by media
coverage that sees Everest as being endlessly “conquered” rather than passé.
The costs involved, in the order of £50,000
with a reputable company for a single trip, have created dangerously competing
dynamics for would-be “conquistadors of the useless” to borrow from the great
French mountaineer Lionel Terray.
If you can only afford to attempt the
mountain once, the need to succeed risks doubling – even trebling – down on
what is already a risky bet. “Summit fever””, as the accomplished US
mountaineer and chronicler of Everest and the Himalaya Alan Arnette told me
last week from his home in Colorado, is a real thing. But the economics of
Everest operate in more subtle ways as well.
The transactional nature of most Everest
attempts has seen a shift in how aspirants view responsibility, moving it away
from a question of an individual’s own judgment and subcontracting it to
guiding companies, some excellent, some of them far less scrupulous.
For Nepal, where the spring Everest season is
a valuable annual source of foreign currency, there is little interest in
either limiting numbers or regulating the new cut-price Nepalese companies that
have been set up to compete with the expensive foreign-owned guiding outfits.
Perhaps most worrying is that the business
model of these newer companies, often charging less than half the price of
foreign competitors, critics suggest, relies on the volume of clients and a
tacit understanding that many of those signing up will not get very high on the
mountain, meaning there is no imperative to check climbing credentials.
Rounding off the whole equation is the
question of pricing and value. Western companies, having fixed a price – both
cultural and monetary – for an Everest summit, having created a desirable product
and a growing market, have also motivated cheaper operators to try to undercut
them, making an overcrowded business riskier for everyone.
A quote attributed to one of the pioneers of
Everest, the New Zealand mountaineer George Lowe, who helped establish the
route up the Lhotse face that most commercial clients now follow, suggested
that Everest – 40 years later – had become the “greasy pole of Asia”.
It is not quite true. Looking at Purja’s
photo, it is not only dread you sense, but hubris, too. In the suggestion that
its summit can simply be bought, a key point has been lost: that climbing is as
much about judicious turning back and failure as it is about reaching the top.
