Humans have a unique way of ruining things, and now we can add Mount Everest to that list.

Earlier in the week, we wrote about the “carnage” that climbers were encountering when trying to summit the highest peak in the world, with 11 deaths in the 2019 season already.

People spoke of stepping over dead bodies, having to wait in a queue at a height referred to as ‘the death zone’, climbers who have no idea what they’re in for, and commercial operators who were risking their clients’ lives for a quick buck.

If you ask the climbers who spoke with the New York Times, it’s every bit as bad as it’s made out to be. Here’s Ed Dohring, a doctor from Arizona:

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.

“It was scary,” he said by telephone from Kathmandu, Nepal, where he was resting in a hotel room. “It was like a zoo.”

… Everest’s inimitable appeal [has led to] to a growing body of thrill-seekers the world over. And the fact that Nepal, one of Asia’s poorest nations and the site of most Everest climbs, has a long record of shoddy regulations, mismanagement and corruption.

The result is a crowded, unruly scene reminiscent of “Lord of the Flies” — at 29,000 feet. At that altitude, there is no room for error and altruism is put to the test.

Probably won’t be long until somebody rolls a rock onto another climber’s head and chant’s ‘spill his blood’.

Here’s one video doing the rounds that shows just how bumper to bumper it’s all become:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Waiting for climbing up. . . @everester_rohtash_khileri_29 . . #rohtash_khileri #climber #mountaineer #everester #climbing #mountains #mount #everest #mteverest #mounteverest #mounteverestofficial #everestsummit #everest2018 #everest8848 #everest2019 #summit #8848m #sagarmatha #himalayas #expeditions #adventuretime #commando #life #kathmandu #nepal #indian

A post shared by Commando_Of_Mountain (@everester_rohtash_khileri_29) on May 27, 2019 at 7:49am PDT

As previously mentioned, perhaps the most dangerous aspect is how woefully inexperienced many of the climbers are:

Some climbers did not even know how to put on a pair of crampons, clip-on spikes that increase traction on ice, Sherpas said.

Nepal has no strict rules about who can climb Everest, and veteran climbers say that is a recipe for disaster.

“You have to qualify to do the Ironman,” said Alan Arnette, a prominent Everest chronicler and climber. “But you don’t have to qualify to climb the highest mountain in the world? What’s wrong with this picture?”

…A few decades ago, the people climbing Everest were largely experienced mountaineers willing to pay a lot of money. But in recent years, longtime climbers say, lower-cost operators working out of small storefronts in Kathmandu, the capital, and even more expensive foreign companies that don’t emphasize safety have entered the market and offered to take just about anyone to the top.

In a recent investigation, breathing cylinders supplied to climbers by dodgy operators were found to be leaking, exploding, and improperly filled on the black market.

When things go wrong on the mountain, especially in the dreaded ‘death zone’, it’s pretty much everyone for themselves:

Fatima Deryan, an experienced Lebanese mountaineer, was making her way to the summit recently when less experienced climbers started collapsing in front of her. Temperatures were dropping to -30 Celsius. Oxygen tanks were running low. And roughly 150 people were packed together, clipped to the same safety line.

“A lot of people were panicking, worrying about themselves — and nobody thinks about those who are collapsing,” Ms. Deryan said.

“It is a question of ethics,” she said. “We are all on oxygen. You figure out that if you help, you are going to die.”

“It was terrible,” she said.

Another climber, Rizza Alee, told a similar story:

“I saw some people like they had no emotions,” he said. “I asked people for water and no one gave me any. People are really obsessed with the summit. They are ready to kill themselves for the summit.”

Kill themselves, and others, by the sound of things.

Some climbers have even gone as far as to send pictures to loved ones back home whilst they wait to summit, fearing that they may never make it back down again.

I applaud the human spirit to never give up, but sometimes you really have to reevaluate your priorities.

[source:nytimes]