Climb Every Mountain

I don’t have a lot of things on my bucket list.

See Portugal. See Pittsburgh. (No. Seriously.) Write a novel. (Note to self: better get going.)

Climbing Everest is not on it.

Not that I haven’t climbed any mountains.

I’ve climbed Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. And Mount Katahdin in Maine. (Not 100% I “summitted” on that one.) I got as far as Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mount Washington.

All of these treks occurred well over 40 years ago. Having shown no interest in a climb since then, I doubt mountain climbing of any sort will be added to my list. Especially not the type of mountain climbing that requires crampons, ice axes and face masks.

Then again, I’ve never been a physical adventurer, a big risk taker. If I had to choose between the satisfaction, the triumph of making it to the peak of some peak under grueling conditions, or the pure, unadulterated meh of standing in my kitchen with a cup of tea, watching a snowstorm, well, meh ‘r us.

But that’s just me.

On the other end of the adventure spectrum, there are a ton of folks do seem to want to climb Everest.

It’s not quite the same experience it was in the old days (i.e., 1953) when Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa companion Tenzing Norgay became the first to have paid a recorded visit to the top of the world. Today, the equipment is better. So are known routes. And weather forecast. If not exactly accessible in the same way Mount Monadnock is, let’s just say that it’s easier to get there than it used to be.

And climbing Mount Everest has become quite the tourist business. To the extent that just about any one with the money to get themselves to Nepal and buy into a tour can set out for the summit of Everest.

Fly-by-night adventure companies are taking up untrained climbers who pose a risk to everyone on the mountain. And the Nepalese government, hungry for every climbing dollar it can get, has issued more permits than Everest can safely handle, some experienced mountaineers say. (Source: NY Times)

The result is that crowds are almost as thick as they are around say, the Statue of Liberty or the Cheers bar. (Amazingly, the latter is still hopping, even though the show’s been off the air for 25 years.)

And this season, it’s been so crowded at the top of Everest that 11 people have died. So far.

One climber who made it up and out alive, Ed Dohring, encountered a ton of fellow travelers as he neared his goal. Trouble was, they weren’t behaving like super-polite Brits in a bus queue.

Climbers were pushing and shoving to take selfies. The flat part of the summit, which he estimated at about the size of two Ping-Pong tables, was packed with 15 or 20 people. To get up there, he had to wait hours in a line, chest to chest, one puffy jacket after the next, on an icy, rocky ridge with a several-thousand foot drop.

He even had to step around the body of a woman who had just died.

Did I mention that Dohring is a doctor? No mention in the article of whether he tended to the dead woman. Maybe he’s savvy enough to recognize dead when he sees it. Probably doesn’t take long for rigor mortis to set in when it’s freezing out.

Not to mention that Dohring had that lifelong goal in mind.

And, if he’s like most of the climbers, he was only carrying enough compressed oxygen canisters to get him to the top and back to safety. So when things jam up, and climbers get delayed – and have to expend extra energy hopping over dead bodies – they may start running out of oxygen.

Things might get ugly.

According to Sherpas and climbers, some of the deaths this year were caused by people getting held up in the long lines on the last 1,000 feet or so of the climb, unable to get up and down fast enough to replenish their oxygen supply. Others were simply not fit enough to be on the mountain in the first place.

And it’s been reported that some of these unfit, inexperienced climbers didn’t “even know how to put on a pair of crampons.”

Sheesh. Even I know how to put on a pair of crampons. And, given that we get a lot of ice, I actually own a pair of crampons. Now, they may not be toothy enough for Everest, but they work on the challenging, icebound sidewalks of Boston.

And apparently Nepal is so lax with their permitting and hiker vetting (non-existent), there’d be no problem with me getting the okey-dokey to get in line for the climb. I wouldn’t even have to demonstrate my crampon proficiency.

In the past, say, sometime between Sir Edmund Hillary and a decade or so ago, the only people attempting the climb were experienced. Then came the explosion of adventure travel, and experience buying on the cheap, and Nepal’s over-permitting, and – of course – the selfie culture. Make that selfish culture.

Climbers in groups of 150 are clipped together to a safety line. And people start collapsing. And people start panicking. And most folks aren’t willing and/or able to help out with the panicking collapsers. They’re (understandably) worried about themselves. And less understandably driven to get to the top for the all important selfie.

Anyway, people are fighting through crowds to get to the summit, and then again on the way down. On his way down, Dr. Dohring – who, among other preparations, had “slept at home in a tent that simulated high-altitude conditions” (sounds like fun) - passed another two dead bodies.

Nope, climbing Mount Everest is not going to displace Portugal or Pittsburgh on my bucket list. I don’t want to go any place where I have to worry about my oxygen running out, or where I have to step over dead bodies in either direction.

Novel writing, here I come.