More money than brains
Mount Everest, the Washington Post reports, had nobody at all reach its summit in 2015 — the first time in over 40 years that this has happened. May we hope that this headline reappears, and soon, without requiring an earthquake that kills 8,000 people? The earthquake of April 25 struck Nepal at the very outset of the traditional Everest climbing season; it led to an immediate shutdown of activity on the Tibetan side of the mountain and destroyed climbing infrastructure designed to make the perilous Khumbu Icefall easier for tourists.
The deadliest disasters in the history of the mountain have now happened in consecutive years. Sixteen Sherpas died in an avalanche on the Khumbu on April 18, 2014: they were killed making way for the film crews and the long ( literal) queues of amateur climbers who were scheduled to arrive in May. The Sherpas decided not to work on Everest for the remainder of that season, but the mountain was summited a few weeks later by a Chinese climber, Wang Jing, who used a helicopter to bypass the main base camp and the unpredictable icefall itself.
When the 2015 earthquake hit, 19 climbers were killed, including 10 more Sherpas. The popular Nepalese approach to the mountain was never officially shut down, but the base camp, which ordinarily attracts hundreds of rich thrill-seeking foreigners, was cleared out like a busted speakeasy by May 12. And, make no mistake, you do have to be rich to favour this particular form of adventure travel. Even assuming you can scurry up the mountain without oxygen, Reinhold- Messner- style, the permit alone will run you U.S.$11,000.
Mount Everest seems to have taken it upon itself to answer the defenders of its long-standing tourist plague, and to do it violently. After Jon Krakauer’s 1997 book Into Thin Air documented the fatal follies of starry-eyed Americans who wanted a handheld “conquest” of the summit, the prestige of making an Everest ascent began to dwindle a little. Unfortunately, no one seems to have told news editors old enough to have been raised on the legend of Hillary and Tenzing. They remain vulnerable to the allure of contrived Everest “firsts”, and even of charity projects designed to underwrite someone’s exotic vacation.
It is still not what you would call easy to reach the top of Everest. But, then, it’s not easy to run a marathon in the downtown of a big city. The very parade of Everest bucket-listers shows that the task no longer requires superhuman endurance and heroic will — assuming the Sherpas can be convinced to regain their taste for foreign income, and to resume reassembling the ropes and ladders that have turned the mountain into the equivalent of a badly engineered theme park.
That seems likely, so it is up to you and I to ridicule Everest tourism out of existence. What does it prove to have climbed Everest — with the help of a travel agency, preinstalled climbing aids, and a helper literally bred to altitude — in the 21st century? There are less obnoxious and environmentally burdensome ways to demonstrate physical fitness. ( Ironically, climate change may be making the environs of Everest more dangerous.) There are cheaper ways to display an appetite for risk: playing Russian roulette, as opposed to the Nepalese kind, seems like an obvious option.
The world does not lack for relatively untouched and beautiful natural scenes. Sure, few of these places are picturesquely befogged by the late-imperialist glamour that hovers around the peak of Everest. (How much of the tourist traffic is propelled simply by the outlaw, old- school thrill of being accompanied someplace by a trusty native guide?) But some of these places, if visited, would have the advantage of demonstrating originality and imagination.
No fewer than four thousand people have now stood at the top of Everest. Is taking a literally well-worn path up a mountain, probably while staring at the hindquarters of a chiropractor from Arizona all the way up, really the way to show off your passionate, outdoorsy bona fides? It is, after all, not an accomplishment that will impress a professional mountaineer in 2015. It is done for the barroom, and to provide material for motivational speeches and LinkedIn pages.
The Chinese have the right idea. After Wang Jing climbed the mountain in 2014 she was reviled on the Chineselanguage Internet as “Helicopter Wang”, even though it was her third time reaching the top and her assisted climb actually involved a rare, ultradaring evening descent of the South Col. In other words, her ascent actually had some vestigial features of classical exploration. But it was still recognized instinctively as an attention-seeking exercise involving more money than brains.
CLIMBING EVEREST IS NOW DONE TO IMPRESS DRINKING BUDDIES, NOT PROFESSIONAL CLIMBERS.