Here are a few facts about climbing Mount Everest: one in ten people die trying to get up and down the mountain; most fatal accidents happen on the descent; it’ll cost you on average between $30,000 and $80,000 excluding transportation and equipment; and once you get above camp four, you’ll be in something called ‘the Death Zone.’ Among climbers, it is also known as ‘Rainbow Valley’ because of the wide variety of coloured clothing worn by the bodies that lie strewn about. One of these, the body of a man named Tsewang Paljor, was known as ‘green boots’ and for years was used as a marker by climbers on their way up. In 2014 his corpse disappeared. Nobody knows who took it or where it went.
A few weeks ago I saw the film Everest and though I liked it, primarily for the spectacular vistas, it did paint a disappointingly one-sided picture of Brave White Men on Mountains – as if they hadn’t chosen to put themselves up there, as if ascending a mountain would bring on world peace instead of an ego trip. It was exciting enough but it lacked depth. I read Jon Krakauer’s account of the same events a few years back and I decided to re-read it.
In 1996, journalist Krakauer was contracted by Outside magazine to write an article about climbing Everest. Originally he was meant to follow a group of climbers up to base camp, but Krakauer, an avid mountaineer himself, managed to convince the magazine to sponsor him to join an expedition all the way to the top. On the day of the summit attempt, a storm broke loose and over a dozen climbers got caught in it. More than half did not make it back down the mountain.
What the film leaves out and the book adds is the socioeconomic and political dealings that involve getting to the top. Krakauer describes the plight of the Sherpas, for whom ascending to the top can bring money and respect but also a great deal of danger; but also the consequences of Everest commercialisation that lead to dangerous overcrowding, abhorrent littering, and rivalry between commercial expedition leaders that has them taking greater risks to get as many clients to the top as possible, with all due consequences.
I’ve googled what it takes to climb Everest, more out of curiosity than actual interest in going there, and if that hadn’t put me off then this book certainly would have. Krakauer begins at the top: standing there, having fulfilled his boyhood dreams, he merely feels exhaustion. He hasn’t slept or eaten for days, he is quite literally freezing, running out of oxygen, and all he wants is to get back down. The book pretty much continues in the same vein: sure, there is occasional beauty, but most of it is just trudging up and down a very big rock, hoping you won’t be killed by any of the myriad dangers out there. And that’s before the storm even starts.
It is, however, a deeply personal tale as well, and Krakauer is a fantastic storyteller. At first, there is wry bemusement at the arrogance of other climbers and incapacitated outrage at the treatment of Sherpas; alarmed puzzlement over altitude-induced cerebral and pulmonary edema and encountering mummified corpses on his way up, and jovial, even affectionate, descriptions of more colourful climbers. Then, later, you can practically feel the sense of exhaustion as he reaches his tent at camp four in a blizzard, crashes down and is unable to do anything but sleep; and later, the horrified feeling as he discovers what has happened overnight as he lay sleeping; the fury at the selfishness of other teams, passing people in dire need of help and leaving them to die to reach the summit instead; the choking guilt at having done nothing to save his teammates, whether or not he was able to, at having misidentified a team member leading his family to believe he was safe; at the thought that the expedition leader, Rob Hall, took greater risks than he ought to have done because he had a journalist on his team. Krakauer is very effective at conveying the smothering blanket of emotions that come with survivor’s guilt – he wrote the book about six months after returning – and at times, it almost feels too personal, but it is a fascinating tale that, unlike the film, doesn’t skimp on the background details and politics.
In 2014, sixteen Nepalese Sherpas were killed in an avalanche; in 2015, during the Nepal earthquake, another 19 climbers perished. While you may think this would act as a deterrent, it has only made the 2016 climbing season more lucrative. A heap of corpses sprinkled about the South Col, mountains of trash, and tales of severe frostbite have not managed to deter anyone yet. After reading this book, I wonder what will.
