Death on Everest
- 1 May 07, 08:10 AM
Last Thursday a man was killed. One of the Sherpas, he was approaching the foot of the Lhotse Face when he was hit by a block of ice falling from the seracs a mile above.
People are killed here every year- eleven died last season- but it is still a shocking event which affects everyone in camp. Our Sherpas will retrieve the body and stretcher it down to the valley.
I have seen a lot of death in the mountains. My uncle was killed on Mount Blanc and so I know how it devastates families. The woman with whom I stood on the summit of Everest in 1993 was killed a couple of years later, and another friend hung off the ropes of the Hillary Step for 18 months until someone had the kindness to cut his body down. How can we possibly justify these costs? Hemmingway said “There are only three true sports: motor racing, bull-fighting and mountaineering. All the rest are merely games.” He meant that the risk of death validated the activity, but I don’t subscribe to his macho philosophy. I think that we should admit that this is a selfish sport and make life decisions accordingly- such as whether to have children or not.
The pity is that it is usually the Sherpas who are the victims. In the first great accident on Mount Everest in 1922 seven Sherpas died in an avalanche. My relative Howard Somervell who was climbing with them wrote in agony “Why oh why couldn’t some of we Britishers have died?” His question was answered two years later when his friend George Mallory disappeared high up on the North Ridge with climbing companion Sandy Irvine. The consequences were severe. Ruth Mallory was left with three young children and wrote to Winthrop-Young a cry which seems to sum up the contingent nature of climbing: “Why did it happen? It so easily might not have done!”
The Irvine family left a night-light burning in the porch for years after Sandy’s death in the hope that he might come home- a fact I find unutterably sad.
Year after year more Sherpas and more clients die. If this mountain was in Europe it would have been closed down. But still we come, and still we expect to get away with it.
Why do we do it? When I look up from this page and gaze at the mountains surrounding me I see the beauty of this place and feel the joy of climbing so high. That’s why.
But someone’s father has died.
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Foreigners climb for adventure; sherpas because their livelihoods depend on it, but both risk their lives for an essentially unnecessary activity.
The Extreme Everest expedition may be unique in that there is some unselfish purpose for being there.
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What a moving account of such a difficult subject. Any death is a death too many and the more I read about this mountain the less I understand it's attraction to some people. Reading today about Cathy O'Dowd and her account of leaving Fran (Francys Arsentiev) to die, I was amazed to come across articles in the UK Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail by Cathy's husband who is planning to return to retrieve and bury the bodies of Fran, an Indian climber and another lone climber who died during his descent; in an attempt to give them back their dignity.
Keep safe.
Sylvia
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I think I understand up to a certain extent why these climbers pursue such madness. It's because of the fact that someday I hope to do this myself, i guess its just passion. This has been building up in me for the past couple of years, I am a student of 20 years of age but financially I havent got that chance to actually carry out a 8000er attempt. I am aware of the death factor, but that kind of becomes blurry when you really want something. I guess thats what keeps the climbers going back and having a buzz out of kissing death.
Hopefully the team will achieve it objective.
Peace
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