Groundhog season on Mt Everest
As hundreds of tourist climbers gather at base camp for next month’s push to the summit, James Kaiser asks what can be done to avoid a repeat of the disastrous 2019 season.
Everest’s groundhog season goes like this: deaths every year since 1977 (apart from the cancelled 2020 season); climbers overtaking the dying and stepping over the dead; tents discarded with logos ripped off so the commercial climbing operator goes unpunished; heavy oxygen cylinders and thousands of kilograms of human waste left behind; oxygen bottles being stolen in the ‘‘death zone’’ above 8000 metres; leaking oxygen bottles bought on the black market; pushing and shoving in the scramble to the top; a brutal natural landscape with jet-stream winds, unforgiving storms, and 3000m vertical drops.
Is any other bucket list item so bleak?
This is the harsh reality when climbing the world’s highest mountain: a self-inflicted humanitarian crisis of epic proportions with the same causes every year. Nothing changes and lessons are never learned.
And right now, after the welldocumented disasters of the 2019 season, the 2021 sequel is under way, starting with weeks of acclimatisation and culminating in the summit push next month.
Several hundred tourist climbers have congregated at base camp, waiting for their time to shine. The stakes are arguably higher now. Present will be those whose dreams were shattered in 2020, along with the 2021 cohort, all guided by the operators whose profits took a big hit last year.
So we can expect a recurrence of overcrowding, and queues meandering as far as the eye can see; operators who don’t believe they should turn back clients; alleged corruption from government officials charged with monitoring the situation; inadequate government regulation; insurance scams; fake summit photos; inexperienced climbers who can’t even put on their own crampons.
There are no restrictions on Everest, at least not on the Nepali side, neither in terms of the number of climbers nor their experience levels, and the flow-on effects are catastrophic.
The current situation on Everest is indescribably grim, but it has not always been the case. Early on, the few permits issued were in the name of scientific research, or to test a country’s elite climbers. Over time, the publicity the mountaineering industry received, combined with the misguided advertising suggesting anyone can climb Everest, led to climber numbers exploding. All the while, the quality of climbing operators began to drop.
Four of the five deadliest years, and 27 per cent of the more than 300 deaths, have occurred since 2012. Other countries would likely have undergone extensive reviews and bans on certain adventure tourism activities for much less.
But perhaps most significantly, about a third of all deaths are among the local high-altitude workers (LHWs, commonly called Sherpas) who undertake perilous work with inadequate compensation in the event of death or serious illness.
Paradoxically, while LHWs literally and metaphorically piggyback the tourist climbers to the top, they themselves are too often taken for a ride by the very institutions which should protect high-altitude climbing’s most vital asset.
LHWs bear a disproportionately high risk. A combined 26 died in avalanches in late April 2014 and 2015, as they were fixing ropes and ladders for the climbers on the Khumbu Ice Fall. This crevasseridden, four-kilometre stretch is like a giant Tetris game gone horribly wrong; a freakishly irregular pile of huge ice blocks that LHWs can cross a mind-boggling 40 times in a season to pave the way.
The tourist climbers are excessively dependent on the LHWs; virtually no-one would be able to summit without them. This begs an interesting question: can Everest still be considered a genuine climb? Or is that beside the point?
But the climbers’ dependence on the LHWs has caveats. The term ‘‘Sherpa’’ has been too easily associated with a friendly porter at ease in the unforgiving high-alpine environment when, in reality, they still need extensive training they often do not receive.
Furthermore, there is a lot at stake for LHWs: abandoning a client can be a career-ending move, while those who take climbers to the top are rewarded by more trips and more pay. Their families can be brought out of poverty or into huge debt, depending on whether the LHW lives or dies (or suffers a permanent disability).
So, why does Everest groundhog season recur every year? Alan Arnette, a well-respected climbing blogger, puts it down to climber ignorance and ego, in addition to operator and government greed.
Some operators take short-cuts in client vetting and LHW training, while the government creams
US$11,000 per climber yet does not do enough to reinvest revenue to improve mountain safety.
The dangers of climbing Everest are not exactly a surprise, yet nearly
1000 people a year decide to play the world’s highest game of Russian roulette.
The Nepali government has tried several times to address concerns about climber and operator credentials, which typically lack credibility, given the huge propensity for operators to exploit the endless loopholes and easy circumvents.
Most concerning of all, perhaps, Arnette confirmed with me that some operators were part of the committee that determined the rules after the 2019 season.
Given that the traditional regulatory approach gives little confidence of any solution, a fresh perspective is needed. The annual death toll could be severely reduced by improving both the inexperienced climbers’ empathy towards everyone on the mountain (demand side), and the LHWs’ low levels of education (supply side).
Incredibly, it is estimated that almost half the climbers on Everest lack the necessary experience and credentials. The prevalence of such huge numbers of inexperienced climbers comes down to a lack of awareness of the wider implications of their decision to climb. These climbers do not appreciate the risk they pose to themselves, other weak climbers, genuine mountaineers, would-be rescuers and, most significantly, the LHWs, who face the tricky trade-off between an enticing salary and the sacrifices they would need to make, in health, religion and family.
As it stands, the summit fever among inexperienced climbers seems to go unchallenged; it’s treated simply as an entitlement in which the pros are off the scale and the cons have not been categorised.
Research in psychology and sociology, albeit far from unanimous, points the finger at consequences of inequality and societal dysfunction at a higher level, with demographic, socio-economic
and environmental factors at play at the individual level. By making sense of the psychology of climbers in their Everest pursuit – something that has been given surprisingly little attention – we can far better understand the annual high-altitude debacle, and find opportunities to help resolve it.
Climbers, no matter their experience, contribute vital tourist dollars to one of the poorest countries in the world. But in what is, at best, a weakly regulated industry, giving inexperienced climbers the green light to climb is too far removed from common sense.
By barring inexperienced climbers from Everest, the crowds would reduce and the calibre of climbers would significantly increase.
However, many studies highlight mismatches between reality and one’s self-perception of skills and character. How can you convince someone that climbing a ‘‘walk-up’’ in the Rockies or Mt Kilimanjaro – certainly great feats in themselves – still fails miserably at demonstrating competence at climbing more technical peaks in the death zone above 8000m, where oxygen is just a third of that at sea level?
The positive news is that, according to research, all is not lost: greater empathy arises when people are given the required reminders and prompts, and if we spend time with people who are different from us.
The question is, will the effects of altruism ever spill over into demonstrating greater empathy on Everest, or is the deadly rat race up the world’s highest peak too firmly entrenched?
Then there’s the supply-side lever of greater education for LHWs, enabling them to have alternative career options to high alpine work.
A number of organisations have been set up in the Himalayas to improve education levels. John Loof, former general manager of the Sir Edmund Hillary-founded New Zealand Himalayan Trust, pointed out to me that the organisation has already committed to a five-year $3.2 million project to fund literacy improvement, salary support, infrastructure, teacher training and scholarships across the region.
The collective impact of Himalayan-based charities on education levels is already significant. Loof noticed that local Himalayan people make up an everincreasing proportion of the skilled labour market in the area, in professions such as engineers, doctors and teachers. He cites doctors in the Khumbu region: all those who work in the public hospitals are Nepalese, with many having furthered their studies overseas before returning to their roots to apply their skills.
Greater education might not always lead to skilled employment for locals. Nepal is just outside the poorest decile of countries which, in itself, limits job opportunities. The aftermath of Covid-19 will further damage job retention and creation. It is likely that climbing operators will be able to count on their local staff for some time yet.
Mt Everest and carnage have been synonymous for almost a century, and 2021 will surely be no exception. Throw in a high-altitude, lung-damaging outbreak of Covid-19 (reports suggest it has already reached base camp), or a poorly timed avalanche or storm, and carnage will take on a whole new definition. It would be groundhog season, but potentially even worse.