Mt. Everest is the highest peak on earth. So what? It’s been a long time since climbing Everest was actually the pinnacle of mountaineering achievement. These days, it’s all about firsts, but not in the traditional climbing sense. Instead of putting up a new route or repeating an established line by a style that advances the standards of mountaineering, people tend to focus on more obscure firsts that don’t actually require the advancement of, well, anything.
Things that mattered:
Before I start into a rant about the peak, let me first point out that quite a few very influential and sometimes ground-breaking feats have taken place on Everest. Not surprisingly, most of them happened before web-linked video cameras were a constant presence on the mountain.
First Ascent: No doubt about it, the first ascent of the world’s highest peak by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953 was a serious milestone in mountaineering history.
First Ascent without Supplemental Oxygen: In 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler made the first oxygen-free ascent of the peak, a feat that most climbers thought was impossible.
First Solo Ascent: Two years after his amazing achievement, Messner came back to do the first solo ascent of Everest. Once again, he climbed without oxygen.
Night-Naked Ascent of Japenese Couloir: In 1986 Erhard Loretan and Jean Troillet made a blazingly fast ascent of the Japenese Couloir by tossing traditional climbing styles out the window. The team climbed at night with minimal bivy gear and rested during the relative warmth of the day. The entire climb from base camp to base camp took only 43 hours including the 4+ hours of glissading it took to get from the summit to the base.
First Ski Descent: Lots of people have said that summit day on Everest is like walking up a ski hill with no oxygen. Davo Karničar made this a reality by summiting the peak in the middle of the night and skiing off the summit in the early morning hours in October of 2000.
Unsupported Trip: Göran Kropp biked to the Himalayas from his home in Sweden in 1996. Once there, he climbed Everest solo and without oxygen, and then biked home.
Speed Record Without Oxygen: Christian Stangl ran up the northeast ridge in only 16 hours and 42 minutes, several others have come without hours and even minutes of this time. The fastest climb with oxygen took about half as long.
Things that kinda mattered:
Several people have overcome some serious obstacles to climb Everest. While these feats fall outside the realm of advancing mountaineering, they’re definitely genuine firsts and deserve bragging rights …
First Blind Ascent: Erik Weihenmayer climbed this mountain without perhaps the most important tool a climber can have. I can’t even walk to the bathroom in the dark without kicking the coffee table and bruising my shin.
First Double-Amputee Ascent: Mark Inglis topped out the peak with two prosthetic legs. Kinda makes the rest of us look like wussies, huh?
Youngest Ascent: Thirteen-year-old Jordan Romero topped out the peak last month in his quest to become the youngest. Despite the fact that he had already climbed several other peaks including Denali (which he did at age 11), the press got word of his attempt and took the opportunity to sling mud at his parents for letting him try. Since his climb was successful and didn’t involve any drama, the press had no choice but to congratulate him.
Things that don’t matter:
Now don’t get me wrong. Climbing Everest by any means is pretty damn cool. Even for the fittest climbers it’s a challenge, but it doesn’t push the standard of climbing forward any more than an ascent of Denali. Doing something truly outstanding is hard. Putting up new routes takes a lot of work and seriously limits the chance of success. Everest is the second-most expensive peak in the world to attempt, and few people want to risk not succeeding. As a result, most of the “firsts” on this peak have nothing to do with the actual climbing that takes place. Here are some of my favorite examples:
First Ascent of a Specific Nationality: Wow, you’re from Ubekerdestan? Good for you. That doesn’t make your ascent any more impressive than the thousands who came before you.
First Married Couple: Marija and Andrej Štremfelj climbed and topped out the peak without killing each other. Not many marriages can handle that much time in a tent. This officially makes Marija Štremfelj much easier to get along with than my ex-wife.
Olympic Torch on Summit: Like many, I have serious issues with the NOC letting China host the games given their serious human-rights violations. Who gives a flip that the torch touches the summit of Everest on the way there?
First Summit Helicopter Landing: While this may be a stride in aviation, it has absolutely nothing to do with climbing except maybe the possibility of a rescue. The way people just throw in the towel and call for help these days, the last thing they need is any encouragement to call in the cavalry when things go wrong.
Television Shows: The Discovery Channel released two seasons of the painful-to-watch program Everest: Beyond The Limit, where inexperienced climbers struggle with the most basic of mountaineering techniques, disobey the wishes of guides, and argue with the expedition leader while drama-building music plays in the background and a voice-over explains how much danger everyone is in and how their actions are endangering others. Every climber knows that television and movies love to dramatize the sport in a way that makes it nearly unrecognizable as the real thing. The simple fact that these people are up on the mountain in the first place proves that Everest is no longer a proving ground for alpine climbing.
The final word:
In 1988 Mark Twight and Barry Blanchard made several attempts at a new route with less gear than most people take on a weekend camping trip. They made it as high as 27,500 feet before being turned about by altitude illness. Their ascent would have landed solidly in the “things that mattered” category, but since they didn’t top out, didn’t require a massive rescue effort to get down, and no one died, few non-climbers (and relatively few climbers) have the slightest clue what they tried to accomplish.
Despite the fact that this was by definition a failed climb, it was much more impressive than nearly any event on the peak that’s made headlines in recent times. I don’t care so much that Everest is what it is. What bothers me is the things that aren’t firsts in the purest sense of the word are the things that get all the press, the things that become known to the non-climbing public, and the things that non-climbers think climbing is all about.
I’ve had family members see overblown news reports and television shows about Everest and call me during commercial breaks to tell me that I should stop climbing because it’s so dangerous. All of the press coverage on the world’s highest peak leads the public at large to assume that summiting Everest is the most important thing a climber could do, and that every climber should strive to do so.
Just about every climber, upon admitting that they’re a climber to someone who has never participated, has had to answer questions like, “Would you help someone who needed it, or would you just leave them there like those people on Everest?” or “Have you seen that Discovery Channel show? Do you think the biker and the head guide will get in another fight on the next episode?” These days I rarely tell someone that I’m a climber because I’m sick of talking about a mountain that I’ve never been to and really don’t care about.
What do you think about the great Everest debate? Post it up in the comments section.
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Tags: climbing, mountaineering
Adam,
Thank you for including our attempt in this article, seriously. We laid everything out within the context of our ethics and came up short.
That trip happened in a different lifetime, not only for me but for climbing itself. In an era where the siege style efforts were normal we preached and practiced a way of climbing that emphasized doing things under our own power, expressing our skill, and willing to accept the risk and challenge naturally presented by the mountain. Of course we used the best technology available but very little of it, and we did not depend on it to make up a shortfall of ability or experience.
The technological crutch seems bigger these days but I think it only appears so due to the breadth of techno-crap available: dependence on it is likely not greater or lesser since this is a human issue, a nature-of-man issue and that hasn’t changed so much in the last 22 years. What has changed is both public and climber acceptance of this crutch as absolute normal. When man’s inventions are great enough to manipulate much of the danger out of the endeavor, when our collective experience is vast enough that what was once remarkable is more or less routine … well that’s when the irrelevant “firsts” start cropping up. Otherwise how would one characterize a banal accomplishment in a way that separates it from that of many, many others?
The youngest to get up there on top had a far different human experience than did Messner and Habeler when they made it without oxygen. And to compare the psychological hurdle of their ascent to more a commonly known sporting achievement, Bannister’s four-minute mile only lasted four minutes. To be sure, folks were concerned that his heart would blow up, etc. But Messner and Habeler carried the weight of uncertainty and incredible risk for days, and it only grew heavier in those final hours to the top. Even today, 32 years later, an unsupported ascent of Everest, without oxygen, i.e. climbing the peak under the most natural conditions possible, is unheard of while plenty of “Adventurepreneurs” have made their way to the summit and suffered under the delusion of having actually climbed there.
The roots of adventure still exist if anyone wants to go looking for them.
Mark Twight
SLC, Utah
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+1 to what Twight said. He’s a hero not only for his accomplishments within the arenas wherein we test ourselves, but for his class outside those venues. If anyone knows whereof he speaks, he does.
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[...] killed so many able-bodied adults is far from wise. This would fit well into Adam Riser’s Everest: A Cynical View of the Latest ‘Firsts’ story. By Rocky Thompson (0) comments | Email This Post | [...]
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[...] killed so many able-bodied adults is far from wise. This would fit well into Adam Riser’s Everest: A Cynical View of the Latest ‘Firsts’ [...]
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Adventurepreneurs – really? OK Mark, from now on all those who have spent their lives preparing for an Everest attempt and are smart enough to enlist the services of a guide company whose knowledge and experience may save their lives must say the following: My accomplishment means nothing. I wish I was Mark Twight.
What should we do Mark, ignore the safety opportunities that now exist on the mountain – would you? The concept of adventure is personal and individual. You don’t get to decide what is and is not adventure.
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