[Book Reviews] Security and Mount Everest
Hello, Seattle! Somewhat recently I read "High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed", which came recommended to me. Indeed, it was a good recommendation. It's rather the opposite of the more common triumphal feel-good read that is the staple of books about mountaineering, and doesn't quite fit in to the other common trope of the genre, books about that terrible tragedy that happened to those other people and what should have been done differently to prevent it. Instead, "High Crimes" is basically about Everest and human evil. Some of it's financial, people labeling refilled oxygen bottles as original ones for sale and then shrugging and going "huh, funny" when they fail climbers and the climbers have to descend. Some of it's governmental, permit fees and seizure and exploitation of Tibet and political destabilization causing a great uptick in bribes required and shakedowns shook down. And some of it's anarchic, figuring out what you do when your necessary-for-life supplies are stolen in your absence at an altitude where there is no real potential for law enforcement. Or what you do when one of your trip members gets violent. There's a well known incident of one repeat Everest summiter punching his wife, the woman with the most Everest summits ever, in the head at 21,000 feet and knocking her out. At that altitude, that's a life threat. This book is the main reason that incident is well known. He then stalked around the camp threatening everyone else, and the other climbers slept (or failed to) holding their ice axes or a knife, afraid he was going to attack them too. We have guides misrepresenting their experience, abandoning their only clients, and summiting themselves. There's a lot of deception -- one particularly shameless fellow who did not summit stole the camera from a successful summiter whom he thought was dying and then left him there to die. He then claimed that that was him in the photos on the summit. (Under 94839208392 layers of clothing and goggles, it's not immediately obvious that it was not.) He was rather taken aback when the guy he'd left to die didn't, made it down, and then started asking some pretty uncomfortable questions as to why this fellow stole his camera rather than trying to save his life.
Life-saving up there is economically disincentivized. Most of the climbers on the mountain are not in physical condition to assist in a rescue attempt -- a lot of Everest climbers aren't mountaineers so much as they are people who want to get up this one mountain once. So they don't have the serious conditioning + fortunate genes combination to be able to take care of themselves at altitude much of the time, much less help anyone else. Everyone up there is pretty far down on Maslow and not always thinking very clearly. It's a recipe for conflict... weaker climbers don't mean to prey on the resources of the stronger and more well-equipped parties, but they do it anyway. Or they die. Everyone thinks big and dreams hard and sees themselves on the summit. That's not always how it works out, particularly for the poorly prepared. For most people, if you're near death and you "find" a tent and food, you don't care if it's not yours. The human animal wants to survive. It's totally eating that food and taking that tent and burning that fuel. Given that there are relatively few places suitable for pitching tents, their locations are well known, and it's not like you can really carry heavy locks up there or make a tent door lock that would survive a knife slit on the leeward side, it's a tough security problem. You have to leave your supplies unattended in high camps, you can't be at all of them all the time, and a lot of stuff apparently goes walking in the night. No one saw anything. No one will admit to it.
Lots of points to the book for being thought-provoking, particularly about the monetizing and Maslow-security aspects of the situation. It's rare that I find a book on mountaineering day-job relevant, but this one was. Four bland lies out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/553740.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.
Life-saving up there is economically disincentivized. Most of the climbers on the mountain are not in physical condition to assist in a rescue attempt -- a lot of Everest climbers aren't mountaineers so much as they are people who want to get up this one mountain once. So they don't have the serious conditioning + fortunate genes combination to be able to take care of themselves at altitude much of the time, much less help anyone else. Everyone up there is pretty far down on Maslow and not always thinking very clearly. It's a recipe for conflict... weaker climbers don't mean to prey on the resources of the stronger and more well-equipped parties, but they do it anyway. Or they die. Everyone thinks big and dreams hard and sees themselves on the summit. That's not always how it works out, particularly for the poorly prepared. For most people, if you're near death and you "find" a tent and food, you don't care if it's not yours. The human animal wants to survive. It's totally eating that food and taking that tent and burning that fuel. Given that there are relatively few places suitable for pitching tents, their locations are well known, and it's not like you can really carry heavy locks up there or make a tent door lock that would survive a knife slit on the leeward side, it's a tough security problem. You have to leave your supplies unattended in high camps, you can't be at all of them all the time, and a lot of stuff apparently goes walking in the night. No one saw anything. No one will admit to it.
Lots of points to the book for being thought-provoking, particularly about the monetizing and Maslow-security aspects of the situation. It's rare that I find a book on mountaineering day-job relevant, but this one was. Four bland lies out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/553740.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.