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Everest: is it right to go back to the top?
- tomglindmeier 12y agoThere is obviously too much money in mountain climbing at the Everest. Everywhere that happens, things are getting unhealthy.
- ericcholis 12y agoI'm conflicted as a whole in regards to Everest. Being a climber who's paid for expedition services on Denali, I can see where it is often necessary. However, adding luxury items and allowing inexperienced climbers on the mountain is dangerous.
- peteretep 12y agoWhen she says "Should Nepalese guides continue to be put at risk", what she doesn't realise she means is "Should Nepalese guides continue to be allowed to put themselves at risk to feed their families".
- linschn 12y agoI climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, which is a sad circus where money is king, and wrote about my experience here : http://rdklein.fr/essays/kilimanjaro.html http://rdklein.fr/essays/kilimanjaro.html I really hope Everest will never get to this point. The difficulty of this summit protects it a bit, as (more or less safely) dragging an inexperienced climber up the mountain is not going to be cheap, but what I hear these last few years about the Everest is alarming. To people that love mountaineering and don't want to climb in America or Europe, I suggest Kirghizstan. It's relatively safe, pristine, and it's really beautiful. There is no infrastructure and no mountain rescue, though, so YMMV depending on what you want to experience.
- grogenaut 12y agoYour altitude chart seems truncated. It talks about symptoms > 3 but stops at 3 urination. Otherwise a great article. I had always thought that climbing Kili was easy from slide shows that I saw when I was a kid from retirees who I saw who had done it. I guess I'll try my local first. Rainier is a mere $1k. Park fee is $25 per party of up to 25. Or I'll just try and complete the wonderland trail first.
- linschn 12y agoI should change the explanation under the chart, thanks for the feedback : you have to add together the points of every symptom you experience, and compare that total to the text below.
- soukiab 12y ago“People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.'There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron... If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.” ― George Mallory
- cushychicken 12y agoI can't help but feel that this quote kind of helps illustrate the point the author is trying to make. Mallory was trying to tell the world, "Yes, I'm doing this for me, and nothing else". Nobody bothered to question whether it was OK to gamble with the native porters' lives at that point. The question remains - is it really OK for you to pay a massive amount of money to gamble with others' lives, in pursuit of your dream?
- sukilot 12y agoMallory went for joy. Gambling someone else's life can be a joy.
- vorg 12y agoStrange how the Guardian published this story about Everest on the annual anniversary of the event which made Everest obsolete as a destination for ultimate challenges: 8 years after the first ascent of Everest, the first manned spacecraft went into space. And because Gagarin "did it alone" (ignoring support work such as base camp and mission control) instead of with a partner, his achievement wasn't superceded in any way by the moon landing another 8 years later. His solitary orbit around the earth stands as the beckoning event right in the middle of the span of time from 1953 to 1969 when humankind went "higher and further" far faster than at any time before. Whereas ascending Everest is too easy and landing on the moon too difficult, to ride into space and return to Earth all alone will define the pinnacle of achievement for explorers well into the forseeable future, regardless of any effort by the Guardian or Western media to suggest otherwise.
- sukilot 12y agoIgnoring base camp and mission control is extremely arbitrary. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon alone, ignoring the people in the capsule. A dog went into space alone before Gagarin did. Alan Eustace went into space in a suit, while Gagarin was juat in a ship that went to space . if you fiddle with the rules, you can say many things are greater than each other. It's nonsense. All achievements are achievements, you don't need to fight to argue that the Russians had the "best" achievement by inventing qualifiers.
- vorg 12y agoI'm not Russian but actually a New Zealander like one of the first two to walk on top of Everest so the rules I'm using aren't fiddled to promote some predetermined nationalistic outcome but actually lessen the memory of one of my countrymen. If you're an American then maybe you should also look more objectively at the historical importance of the events instead of blindly talking up Armstrong or Eustace.
- lttlrck 11y agoWhy feel the need to bring nationalism into the discussion?