Just Saying | Traffic jams in the death zone: is climbing Mount Everest even a real achievement any more?
- Yonden Lhatoo is alarmed by images of human traffic jams above 8,000 metres on the world’s highest mountain and questions whether it is even worth it as climbers lose their lives because of overcrowding this season
One of my favourite uncles fell to his death after he had scaled Mount Everest and was on his way down from the world’s highest peak in May 1993.
He was 41, physically in top form, fully trained and raring to go, having joined an expedition to mark the 40th anniversary of the historic first ascent of the mountain by his own uncle, the more famous Tenzing Norgay.
We were in disbelief that a veteran climber of his calibre could be cut down so cruelly in his prime, coming from a family of pioneering mountaineers who made their names going up and down those same wretched slopes that are swarming with hundreds of people at a time these days.
My father had climbed Everest a decade before that, and my mother’s brother was the first man in the world to scale it twice, long before people started doing it multiple times. In fact I’ve lost count of the number of cousins, in-laws and close and distant relatives who have achieved the same feat.
All that may go with the territory, but the fatalities being reported on Everest this season – at least eight at the time of writing this – are particularly concerning in the context of the human traffic jams in the aptly named “death zone”, at a dizzying altitude of more than 8,000 metres (26,246 feet).
