For those of you who may have seen those old films about Jim Whittaker or Sir Edmund Hillary, the experience nowadays at the real Mount Everest is markedly different. Read the article by Mark Jenkins in the June 2013 issue of National Geographic ("How to Fix Everest") to get a good idea.
Everest is 29,035 feet high, or 8,850 meters. Air pressure at that altitude is one-third that of sea level. Under these conditions, every task becomes an effort.
For example, near the summit there is a rock wall 40 feet high called the "Hillary Step". It would not be a very difficult climb at lower elevations, but in this location it's a major barrier. On May 19, 2012, when 234 people reached the summit of Everest, some were compelled to wait for up to two hours at the Hillary Step for a turn to ascend. Four people died on Everest that day.
Part of the reason for this overcrowding is that better weather reports have been able to isolate the times when an ascent can be made in relative safety. For a great number of climbers, the goal of reaching the summit subsumes other wilderness values. Discarded equipment, trash, "pyramids" of shit (literally) and even bodies are found at the various camps and around the routes to the top.
There isn't any room service to come along and pick up. For many climbers their physical condition isn't sufficient to carry an extra empty oxygen bottle, much less a body. Even the slightest extra burden could make the difference between life and death.
According to Mark Jenkins, the author of the NG article:
Today roughly 90 percent of the climbers on Everest are guided clients, many without basic climbing skills. Having paid $30,000 to $120,000 to be on the mountain, too many callowly expect to reach the summit.
The principal routes to the summit originate in the desperately poor country of Nepal (per capita GDP: $1,400). The country's corrupt government is happy to siphon up climbing fees, but does little or nothing to ensure climbers are fit or have appropriate experience, or that expeditions haul away their detritus. Into this environment come the Playboys of the Western World, who for what is a huge price locally, purchase a place in a guided expedition up to the top, or at least as far as can be attained.
"Guided" can be a euphemism, as not only are guides hired, but porters for equipment can also be purchased, so that the actual load carried by the climber (as well as the concomitant risk) can be substantially reduced by spreading it around to local personnel.
Over 4,000 people have reached the summit of Everest. Since deaths were recorded in 1921, 240 people have died, 157 expedition members and 83 local staff. The causes are various, exhaustion, altitude sickness, crevass/ice fall collapse, exposure/frostbite, avalanche, falls and other reasons.
Most of the deaths occur above the 8,000 meters line (26,000 feet), in what is called the "death zone." According to Wikipedia:
People who die during the climb are typically left behind. About 150 bodies have never been recovered. It is not uncommon to find corpses near the standard climbing routes.
However, statistically about 1% of climbers die on the mountain, a lower rate than in the 1970s and early 1980s. 1% sounds like a low number, but if you compared it to other sports, it is of course extremely high. Also, there are no other sports where the bodies of deceased participants are left on the playing field for year after year.
Climbers have even given a name to one of the bodies, Green Boots, believed to be the remains of Indian climber Tsewang Paljor. Other bodies may receive a "glacial burial" which consists of being rolled off a cliff.
I don't climb mountains, at least not any more (and never big ones at that). I'm not calling for some kind of mythical mountaineering purity. And I'm not saying that this or that person shouldn't be climbing Everest or any other mountain -- that would be arrogant as well as ignorant -- who am I to judge?
But there is something troubling about what is happening on Everest, and it's more than an elitist mountaineering attitude. On Everest nowadays the poor carry the bottled oxygen, food, and essentials for the rich, who achieve (or hope to achieve) the glory of the summit.
In our current social structure, both nationally and internationally, the rich shed obligations, such as military service, and even taxation for the nation's wars, while the poor carry their burdens as the rich ascend to the top.
As a society, we buy the clothing and other products made by semi-slave labor in China and Bengladesh, while factories collapse and kill the workers who make what we want.
This extends to our wars -- at one point in the Iraq war over 20,000 Ugandans were deployed in Iraq, not under the orders of their own government, but hired at rates of $1000 per month or less (still a lot of money by Uganda standards) as mercenaries by U.S. contractors with the Pentagon. (source)). Their chief duty was guard work at bases, and the ready supply of veterans from the wars and rebellions in Uganda (per capita annual GDP: $1,414) made recruitment easily for the contractors.
In the Everest case, the poor literally carry the burdens of the rich. It can't be dodged, or hidden underneath euphemisms such as "job creator", "free trade" or "global war on terror." Everest is a mirror of our society, both national and international.