Two months ago, four climbers died attempting to
reach the summit of Mount Everest. They were caught in a sort-of traffic jam of
150 climbers. Each had spent approximately $25,000 on the trek.
Several years ago I read John Krakauer’s book, Into
Thin Air, which chronicled the real-life, tragic journey the author made in
1996 to the top of Mount Everest. It was riveting and masterfully written, but
also a journey through the selfish obsessions of well-healed, yet bored
westerners who’ve lived lives of such detached comfort they’re desperate for an
experience that will prove they’re still alive. Problem is, eight of them
weren’t alive when Krakauer’s trip was over.
I finished the book puzzling over why anyone would
want to risk death climbing Everest. Is it the same urge that makes a sheltered
girl want to date the dangerous boy – the same giddy hunger that makes
seemingly normal people bungee jump? Maybe. Truth is, there are lots of
intoxicating, heart pounding thrills short of climbing Everest. But death
defying roller coasters are for weekend warriors, Fight Club was just a movie, running with the bulls in Pamplona is
an easy-in, easy-out tourist jaunt and parachuting is so routine now it’s safer
than crossing Conner Street on foot during rush hour.
Climbing Everest is the ultimate high-risk
experience. It requires weeks acclimating yourself to the altitude. There’s
cool stuff like backpacks, mountain climbing gear and oxygen canisters. Add in
life threatening weather, chances of a quarter mile vertical fall to your death
and air so thin it acts on the brain much the same as a bottle of scotch and a
handful of quaaludes, and you’ve got the makings of a real
laugh-in-the-face-of-death experience.
For all the adventure, the people who die on Everest
these days are still husbands, wives, fathers, sons and daughters. They risk
their lives for the ultimate adventure. But leaving your child fatherless for
the sake of a thrill baffles me. I understand completely why pioneers traveled
into the western wilderness. Their survivors can proudly say, “They died
looking for a better life.” I understand why astronauts go into space. The
survivors of those who don’t make it home can proudly say, “They died trying to
broaden man’s understanding of the universe.” But what do the survivors of
those who died on Everest say about their deceased loved one who went searching
to fill the unnamed void in their lives? “My Daddy died climbing Everest
because he had an itch he couldn’t scratch?”
What’s the motivation? They’re not the first to
climb the mountain. It won’t save mankind or Nepal from misery. If the cure for
cancer were in a bottle at the summit, I’d understand. If the solution to world
hunger were written on a piece of paper and trapped beneath a boulder at the
mountain’s peak, I’d offer to go along, or at least help pay for the oxygen
tanks. But those answers are not there, just as the explanations don’t exist
for the widows and widowers whose spouses needed to climb Everest to prove
themselves – test their metal. “Because it’s there,” doesn’t cut it for me.
If these folks feel the need to escape their mundane
lives and accomplish a daunting task (an urge I understand completely) there
are problems that desperately need the kind of time, money and energy that gets
wasted on Everest every year. There are villages without clean water,
drug-infested neighborhoods without hope, homeless people who need houses and
children who can’t read. Imagine the difference that could be made in a
community if the people who climbed Everest with John Krakauer focused all that
time, money and energy on those types of problems. It would be an event worthy
of planting a flag, raising a fist in the air, and triumphantly posing for a
picture.
The fool-hardy adventure seeking doesn’t end on
Everest. Every time millionaire Steve Fossett
tried to fly his balloon around the world I wondered not only why he’s doing
it, but also why the media paid any attention. I understand the value of
Lindberg crossing the Atlantic – it helped push the boundaries of a
revolutionary technology. But flying a balloon around the world in this new
century will prove what? Why not circle the globe on a pogo stick? Would that
be any less difficult or dangerous?
