A super-sized helping of hubris, coming right up!
I just have to say that when I heard that the torch for next year's Summer Olympics is supposed to make a stop on top of Mount Everest, I sincerely hoped they were going to do it by helicopter (I'm not even sure that's any safer than going on foot, but it's been done before and at least there won't be any issues with hazardous and potentially fatal delays resulting from bottlenecks at particularly tricky sections of the climb, not to mention another team adding to the congestion), but alas, no.
According to the official announcement:
One of the highlights of this leg will be the attempt to bring the Olympic Flame to the highest peak in the world Mt. Qomolangma [the Tibetan name]. During the arrival ceremony for the flame into China on March 31, 2008, one of the lanterns with the Olympic Flame will be kept aside. The torchbearer team will then attempt to take the Flame to the highest peak on a day in May that presents the best climatic conditions for the ascent.
...Are they insane?! Not to mince words, but what are those people in Beijing thinking? Are they, in fact, thinking anything at all? Maybe I'm just excessively pessimistic coming off reading about the 1996 Everest disaster, which was also in May during a period that's normally good for climbing, but I am not going to assume that the Chinese government is going to pick strong and experienced mountaineers only. This is a publicity stunt. That's the long and short of it. Forget commercialization. Everest has now entered the advertising gimmick phase.
From what I have read, climbing the mountain is the easy part. Getting up in enough time to get down to the uppermost camp (i.e., shelter) safely before night falls and the temperature drops and the wind rises, etc., is the hard part. And having the good sense to turn back if you hit your turnaround time but you're not at the summit yet. Actually, good sense is probably the most essential part. To paraphrase Dan Mazur, "The summit is still there and you can always go back, but you only have one life." I'm worried that the Chinese team is going to ignore safety considerations for national glory (i.e., leaving team members behind, ignoring other climbers who need help, etc.), and that if they get into trouble, more lives are going to be jeopardized in rescue attempts. Mountain-climbing will likely never be safe and routine. That's just the way it is. And I have yet to see anything that indicates that the Chinese government seriously realizes this, as opposed to making falsely modest comments about the (real) difficulty of the task so that an eventual "beating of the odds" sounds like even more of an accomplishment.
This is life, not Hollywood. All we can hope is that it's a publicity stunt that won't get people killed.
According to the official announcement:
One of the highlights of this leg will be the attempt to bring the Olympic Flame to the highest peak in the world Mt. Qomolangma [the Tibetan name]. During the arrival ceremony for the flame into China on March 31, 2008, one of the lanterns with the Olympic Flame will be kept aside. The torchbearer team will then attempt to take the Flame to the highest peak on a day in May that presents the best climatic conditions for the ascent.
...Are they insane?! Not to mince words, but what are those people in Beijing thinking? Are they, in fact, thinking anything at all? Maybe I'm just excessively pessimistic coming off reading about the 1996 Everest disaster, which was also in May during a period that's normally good for climbing, but I am not going to assume that the Chinese government is going to pick strong and experienced mountaineers only. This is a publicity stunt. That's the long and short of it. Forget commercialization. Everest has now entered the advertising gimmick phase.
From what I have read, climbing the mountain is the easy part. Getting up in enough time to get down to the uppermost camp (i.e., shelter) safely before night falls and the temperature drops and the wind rises, etc., is the hard part. And having the good sense to turn back if you hit your turnaround time but you're not at the summit yet. Actually, good sense is probably the most essential part. To paraphrase Dan Mazur, "The summit is still there and you can always go back, but you only have one life." I'm worried that the Chinese team is going to ignore safety considerations for national glory (i.e., leaving team members behind, ignoring other climbers who need help, etc.), and that if they get into trouble, more lives are going to be jeopardized in rescue attempts. Mountain-climbing will likely never be safe and routine. That's just the way it is. And I have yet to see anything that indicates that the Chinese government seriously realizes this, as opposed to making falsely modest comments about the (real) difficulty of the task so that an eventual "beating of the odds" sounds like even more of an accomplishment.
This is life, not Hollywood. All we can hope is that it's a publicity stunt that won't get people killed.