Calhoun's Cannons for April 21, 2014
Yes, Nepal's
a desperately poor country. Yes, the
Sherpa guides need the money. That's the
usual game, isn't it? Poor desperate "natives" basically paid to go
into harm's way or paid to die so rich western adventurers can have their
sport. But, c'mon. Thirteen? With three others still
missing? Really? When is enough, enough?
Look, when Hillary and Norgay did it, now that was a challenge! But Everest's been done. Dude, it's so done
that during climbing season the place looks like an ice-filled e-ticket ride at
Disneyland, with long lines of climbers waiting to
summit. And the sacred mountain is now a garbage dump filled with empty oxygen
bottles, discarded climbing junk, human excrement, and dead bodies. It's ridiculous. Time to move on.
But, instead, what we've got now is a yearly stream of rich outsiders willing to
cough up $100,000 bucks just so they can have bragging rights. Or fulfill some kind of egotistical personal need
to expend huge amounts of energy and money to get altitude sickness, have a
stroke, lose some fingers and toes to frostbite, freeze to death or die in an
ice fall. That's great, I get it, high personal
drama, "man against nature," that sort of thing. Fine.
And I get that many top Sherpa guides are extraordinary
mountaineers in their own right and are earning a great living being
guides. As an L.A. Times story by Binaj Gurubachayra and Tim Sullivan (AP) notes,
" "A day after the disaster, many Sherpa guides spoke of their work
in ways that reflect the complexities of poor people working in a deeply
hazardous place. . . . 'The mountains are a death trap,' said Norbu
Tshering, a 50-year-old Sherpa and mountain guide who lives mostly in Katmandu.
. . . 'But we have no other work and most of our people take up this
profession, which has now become a tradition for all of us.' he said."
A tradition "born out of sheer desperation," he forgot to add.
And I get that the "Everest Economy" brings in
tens of millions of dollars a year to Nepal,
money the government will do nothing to endanger. But Sherpas do not have a tradition of
"sport climbing" Everest just for fun. They live in the mountains, they know the
mountains and they do not willingly go into the mountains just for the heck of
it. No sane Sherpa would. Here's the Times again, "For the Sherpas, the
once-obscure mountain people whose name has become synonymous with Everest and
whose entire culture has been changed by decades of working as guides and porters
for wealthy foreigners, it was a brutal reminder of the risks they face."
The risks they face so they can try "to make a better
life for themselves and their families in a desperately poor country," he
forgot to add.
What the Sherpas and all the people of Nepal really need is help building an economy that
makes guiding a real choice, like,
"Do I take this micro-loan and start and grow a small business to support
my family, or do I risk death on the mountain while hauling tons of crap up
Everest so some rich guy can sit around sipping a glass of wine regaling his
friends about how tough his climb was?
Hmmmm, let me think."
Now that would be
a "choice," just as it is for the wealthy westerners who show up with
pockets full of cash, looking for a thrill.
So here's a modest proposal:
From now on, western mountaineers could hire Sherpas to schlep up their
tons of stuff but only to the safer, lowest base camp. Past that point, all those wealthy,
challenge-driven climbers would be responsible for laying their own
guide-ropes, putting in their own ice-ladders, and blazing their own trails across
the deadly "popcorn" fields and ice-falls, all the way up to the
summit. And if they die by the dozens
while doing it, well, isn't that what the idea of "Everest" is all about --personal
best against a formidable, unpredictable, deadly foe?
And if they're unable to do that on their own, then maybe
it's time they just got off the mountain altogether.
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