Mount Everest is officially closed to climbers after the worst accident in its history. The future looks bleak for a number of reasons, not least among them climate change, but that will never dim the allure of the great mountain. We will continue to climb it, even if only in our minds.
Oct. 27, 2011 file photo: The last light of the day sets on Mount Everest as it rises behind Mount Nuptse as seen from Tengboche, in the Himalaya's Khumbu region, Nepal. The Everest climbing season began March, 2014 with new rules that require climbers to bring down at least eight kilograms (17.6 pounds) of their personal garbage, and more security officials at the mountain's base camp to help climbers. More than 4,000 climbers have scaled the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit since it was conquered in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay. Over the years, climbers have left tons of garbage on the slopes on the mountain, and some have called it the "world's highest garbage dump."
In an interview with The New York Times published on March 18, 1923, the legendary English mountaineer George Herbert Leigh Mallory was asked why he was persistent about climbing Mount Everest. His answer became the most famous three words in the history of mountaineering:
"Because it's there."
Images of the entrance to the Everest National Park, in Tibet, China, April 18, 2007. Mallory was 37 when he disappeared while attempting to scale Mount Everest. Along with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine, 22, they were part of the ill-fated 1924 British Everest Expedition, their third assault in four years on the world's highest mountain. Irvine and Mallory were last sighted about 800 vertical feet (245 m) from the summit. Mallory's body was found 75 years later in 1999 by the American mountaineer Conrad Anker and his team. The corpse was face down, frozen hard as concrete, and riddled with injuries. Irvine's body was never found. It is debated to this day if the duo ever summited the mountain.
“Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality,” wrote Jon Krakauer in Into Thin Air, an epic first-person account of the 1996 disaster season on Mount Everest that killed 15 Sherpas and raised serious questions about tourism mountaineering that had created a veritable traffic jam on the peak. It also evokes the terrible aspect of the unforgiving place that is the world's highest mountain, where an avalanche left 16 people dead on April 18, 2014. Of the 25 men hit by the falling ice, most were Sherpas. This last accident is, on record, the worst ever on Everest with the highest number of casualties, wrote Krakauer in a recent blog for The New Yorker titled 'Death and Anger on Everest'.
Qomolungma or Sagarmatha, as the Tibetan Buddhists and Nepalese Sherpas variably address the mountain, remains one of the most popular mountaineering destinations in the world and earns Nepal a fat packet every year in revenue. In the climbing season, which begins in April, the trail to the Everest Base Camp resembles a metropolitan expressway, crammed with trekkers, mountaineers, guides and porters. Teahouses line the road, offering basic bed and breakfast facilities. It’s also a veritable shopping mall of used mountaineering gear left behind by earlier expeditions. A shopaholic friend in her fifties, who blithely made the trip to Base Camp two years ago, declared that there was no better place on earth to buy jackets, visors, rucksacks or crampons.
Nepalese rescue workers and civilians gather around the wreckage of a Beechcraft 1900D operated by Buddha Air
Fly-bys of the mountain are also popular and they too have been fraught with disaster. In February 2011, 19 tourists were killed when a Buddha Air Beechcraft 1900D crashed in heavy rain and dense fog.
Before and after the first confirmed ascent of Everest on May 29, 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay gazed at the world from its highest terrestrial viewpoint, many have died trying to replicate the feat. No summit attempt is imaginable without the able assistance of the Sherpas — rugged pillars of fortitude and endurance who are indispensable to any Everest climb. It is their toil over the years that has built the fabled ‘Yellow Brick Road’ of ropes nearly all the way to the summit.
Mountaineers pass through the treacherous Khumbu Icefall on their way to Mount Everest
Buddhist inhabitants of the villages around the foothills of the Himalayas, the Sherpa are an impoverished minority in a Hindu-majority nation. The people of the plains deem them unemployable, so Sherpa men await the climbing season eagerly for it supplements their penurious life with a flood of riches. They are often the only earning members of their families, which tend yaks and engage in basic sustenance farming. While the seasonal earning of around $8,000 may seem like a killing, it is often the only money they make year-round, for they are not otherwise profitably employed. Many of the Sherpas are veteran mountaineers, having summited the great mountain many times in their lives. There are also other peoples — Gurung, Tamang and Chhetri — who do the work of the Sherpas. In fact, of the 16 people who lost their lives on Everest on April 18, three were of the above ethnicities.
Climbing Everest could well count among the most dangerous occupations in the world. Consider the statistics: Outside magazine reported that more Sherpas have died on Everest in the last three years than US military personnel in Iraq in an approximately equal tenure. In fact, between 2012 and 2014 alone, 24 guides were killed, making it the worst three years in the history of Everest ascent. And we are not even counting those crippled, disabled or paralyzed by accidents, frostbite and altitude-related hemorrhaging. The loss of breadwinners spells the ruin of entire families, often villages.
These statistics don’t cut ice with the Nepal government or tourism regulators, who profit yearly from the $370 million that the adventure travel industry rakes in. Commercial climbing, run by professional expedition agencies, began in the mid-1990s. Over the years, the lines of paying climbers queueing up to summit Everest have gotten longer. The wealth that flows from the Everest business, wrote Jason Burke in The Guardian, ‘irrigates everything below’ — from the guesthouses and cafes, schools and hospitals, to the airstrips, even the road to Kathmandu. Yet, the Sherpas, for all their contribution, are at the fag end of the gravy train. Often, expedition companies don’t foot the hospital expenses of injured Sherpas or pay compensation to the families of the dead. The standard life insurance claim of $4,600 that Sherpas receive, wrote Grayson Schaffer in an Outside Online article titled 'The Disposable Man: A Western history of Sherpas on Everest', barely covers the elaborate funeral expenses. As for the $4,000 rescue insurance, it amounts to nothing since a chopper rescue costs at least $15,000. ‘No service industry in the world,’ Schaffer declared, ‘so frequently kills and maims its workers for the benefit of paying clients. The dead are often forgotten, and their families left with nothing but ghosts.’
Last week, dozens of Sherpas packed up their tents and left the mountain in protest. Many of them have complained that the hefty fees the government levies for climbing permits barely trickles down to the guides. The event signaled the close of the climbing season this year. The Sherpas, sadly, will be the hardest hit.
Lukla-Phakding Walk: Everest Base Camp is a starkly beautiful trek but at the same time a test of endurance. The trek starts at Lukla and Phakding was my first stop. The altitude (3,000 meters) was killing and I was happy for the tea-houses. I cannot imagine how it would feel to try and pitch a tent after arriving!
Namche Bazaar: From Phakding, after walking for 4 hours, the climb to Namche Bazaar just goes up and up for another 3 to 4 hours. But if you can grit your teeth and walk, the place is stunning. On a clear day one can catch a glimpse of Mount Everest from Namche. There is a military museum close to the Everest View Point, also worth a look
The Monastery at Tengboche: Tengboche is the next stop on the trek and it has the biggest monastery on the route. If you read books on the Everest expeditions, most books mention seeking blessings from the lama at this monastery! And the climb to Tengboche is quite steep.
Ama Dablam: Ama Dablam is one of the most beautiful peaks to be seen throughout the trek. The view from Dingboche is the back view of the peak but even that is magnificent! Most trekkers stop to acclimatize on the route and Namche and Dingboche are popular stops.
Dingboche-Lobuje Route: All the routes on the trek are beautiful with its stark scenery and prayer flags. But on the Dingboche Lobuje route you will also find the monuments to those who never returned home from the mountains.
Lobuje village: The trek was so tiring for me that before reaching Lobuje I was never sure if I would be able to make to the next day! My constant chant to whoever would listen to me was, “I wonder if I would be able to haul myself all the way up to the Base Camp.” But once I reached Lobuje for the first time I thought, “It would be a pity if I do not complete the trek now.”
Gorekshep: Gorekshep is 5,100 metres high. At that height I neither had an appetite nor could I sleep. We reached Gorekshep around 1 am, had an early lunch and started for the base camp
Everest Base Camp: I would take thirty baby steps or so and then pant for a count of 15! That is how I managed to stumble across the Everest Base Camp. I did haul myself all the way up there in the end. Mount Everest itself is not visible from the base camp though we did catch a glimpse of it on the way.
Sunrise over Ama Dablam, Kala Patthar: The walk to Kala Patthar starts before dawn because we want to catch the sunrise from there. I along with my guide Deepak started at 3.15 am. Anyway, I could not sleep at night. I would wake every 15 minutes gasping for breath, so I was happy to get out. The way just goes one way - up. But what a view it was to walk up to! This is a view of first morning light catching up with Ama Dablam.
From left to right: Lhotse, Everest and Nuptse. Ignore the first peak from the left in the picture and you then see Lhotse, Mount Everest and Nuptse in the picture. Mount Everest doesn’t look the highest because Nuptse is closest to us. In the mountains they say it is the mountain that decides whether you can complete your trek or not. I am so happy they ruled in my favour!
There is another, more chilling, reason why an ascent of Everest may never be safe again. Even as the world debates over climate change, the evidence in the Himalayas is clear and present, and cannot be shrugged away. Glaciers are retreating rapidly and ice on Mount Everest is melting, which might explain the increased frequency of landslides and avalanches. Kancha Sherpa, one of the oldest living mountain guides, accompanied Hillary on the historic 1953 Everest expedition. He recalls the path to the summit being packed with pristine ice; now only rocks and stones remain. The Buddhist Sherpas have heard of climate change but their faith leads them to believe the depleting snow is the curse of the angry goddess Sagarmatha. Either way the outcome will be the same. When all snow disappears from the Himalaya, the rivers flowing into the plains will dry up and enslave humanity to unspeakable thirst. As for Mount Everest, neither the Sherpas nor the climbers will have anything to do on a bare mountain.
All of that said, 61 years after the first ascent, the allure of Mount Everest remains undimmed. In Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination, Robert Macfarlane wrote: "Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.” There is no unbinding our race from this fascination. The expeditions may begin again next year for, as humans, we are prepared to pay any price for a view from the top of the world. We cannot bear our burning desire to conquer this mountain of the mind. We will climb it because, ice or no ice, it will still be there.
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