Climbing Everest — the risks and the ambition
Everest from the eyes of an amateur mountaineer
This year I wanted to climb a peak above 6,500 meters; instead I trekked to the Everest Base Camp with my dad. After the trek, a friend asked, “Does Everest look as grand from the Base Camp as seen in photos?”
“Not as grand but seeing Everest closely, climbing it has become more real now.”
“Are you planning to climb Everest then?”
I am yet to answer that.
We trekked in Nepal from Lukla to Everest Base Camp and back, a total distance of 100+ km and reached the highest altitude of 5,640 meters during the 9-days trek. The main risk in this trek lay in climbing too high, too fast. It can result in High Altitude Mountain Sickness that can be fatal if ignored. More details of our trek can be found here.
Everest and the Base Camp
We trekked for 4–5 kilometers from Gorakshep to reach our destination — Everest Base Camp. The Base Camp is marked by a rock stating the altitude. Many people who wanted to mark their presence have scribbled messages and names on the rock.
The Base Camp is a colorful site of hundreds of tents in the gray and cold expanse of the mountains. These campsites, resting on the moraine of Khumbu glacier, are home to various teams for 6–8 weeks who hope to summit the highest mountain in the world. In the 90s, the Everest Base Camp was set at Gorakshep; since then, the Khumbu glacier has retracted, moving the Base Camp even closer to the mountain.
On a clear day, we can see a glimpse of Everest from the Base Camp, peeking in the middle of Mt LhoLa on the left and Nuptse on the right.
The Risks
Climbing Everest is an endeavor of some undeniable risks, facts and probabilities.
From the Base Camp, I got a glimpse of the first challenge on the most common South Col route of climbing Everest — the Khumbu Icefall. The Khumbu glacier covers the lower half of the mountain. While the upper part of the glacier is less risky, the lower part of the glacier (also known as the Khumbu Icefall) where the glacier abruptly drops into many huge blocks of ice called seracs, is a significant risk in the route. Crossing the Icefall means climbing around hundreds of seracs, some of them size of large buildings. Any unstable serac can collapse and create an avalanche, taking the lives of any climbers around. On an expedition to Everest, a climber typically crosses the Khumbu Icefall 6–8 times.
Another significant risk in climbing Everest is surviving the Death zone — the altitudes above 8,000 meters (Height of Everest is 8,848 meters). Only one-third of oxygen is available in the death zone compared to what we breathe in the plains. Humans can’t acclimatize in the death zone and the body and mind start deteriorating. This is where supplemental oxygen is used; however, an oxygen cylinder lasts only a few hours, providing limited time to climb up and down the summit. The death zone of Everest is laid with bodies of climbers who lost their lives due to high-altitude sickness (HAPE, HACE), hypothermia, frostbite and often poor judgment at that height. Thus, reaching the summit of Everest and coming down safely is at the mercy of the weather and a race against time.
The Ambition
Then why climb Mt Everest? Or any high-altitude mountain? Explorers driven by curiosity have attempted to climb Everest for over a century. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norway succeeded in 1953; since then, different nations and communities have put their first man and woman on the highest point on the Earth. People have summitted from various routes on the mountain, climbed with or without supplemental oxygen, and other such endeavors.
But why climb Everest today? Because it’s still the highest point on the Earth. And as Reynold Messner, arguably the best, famously said, “Because it is there”. Messner’s response engulfs the I can do it, a raw form of human spirit. I believe that high-altitude climbing with its bargain of fatal consequences lays bare the strengths and weaknesses of human nature and touches the human desire for exploration and meaning.
But if we take away the materialistic motivators of climbing Everest — the recognition, the uniqueness, etc. will we still climb Everest? We can get some sense from the Sherpas who are key to climbing Everest. Many Sherpas often climb Everest as their only means of sustenance, not as a preferred choice. But then some would take the riskiest of climbs for no incentives at all. Tenzing Norgay & Ang Dawa made such an attempt to Everest in March 1947 with Earl Denaman — a Canadian engineer. As Tenzing later conceded (Excerpt from the book Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer):
[N]othing made sense about it. First, we would probably not even get into Tibet. Second, if we did get in we would probably be caught, and, as his guides, we, as well as Denman, would be in serious trouble. Third, I did not for a moment believe that, even if we reached the mountain, a party such as this would be able to climb it. Fourth, the attempt would be highly dangerous. Fifth, Denman had the money neither to pay us well nor to guarantee a decent sum to our dependents in case something happened to us. And so on and so on. Any man in his right mind would have said no. But I couldn’t say no. For in my heart I needed to go, and the pull of Everest was stronger for me than any force on earth. Ang Dawa and I talked for a few minutes, and then we made our decision. “Well,” I told Denman, “we will try.”
During our visit to Everest Base Camp, we met a team of 4 climbers who are climbing Everest right now as I write this from the safety of my home. One of them has been paying from his own pockets to climb the 6th of the 7 summits — the highest mountain on each continent. I hope they return safely.
So Shall we Climb?
I can summarize my biggest mountaineering lesson:
In the mountains (and in life too), first accept the reality, the facts, as they are, and then try to be as ambitious and optimistic about your goals as you want.
High-Altitude Mountain Sickness can happen to anyone, including Sherpas and experienced mountaineers, even on a known and repeated climb; we sometimes overlook such facts in the mountains and pay a heavy price for them. Or the fact that the only effective solution to mountain sickness is rapid descent. That time and weather don’t bend for anyone in the mountains. In high-altitude climbing, everything goes well till it doesn’t; the decisions that we (and sometimes others) make under those conditions determine our future. I hope that we balance our ambition and positivity with facts when the time comes :)
Note: I have done my Advanced Mountaineering Course from Nehru Institute Mountaineering, Uttarkashi, with an ‘A’ grade. I did my Basic Mountaineering Course from Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling, during which I was one of the five women in the batch of 60+ women to reach 100-meters before the BC Roy peak summit (eventually, the weather triumphed!). I occasionally go back to explore and climb mountains!
