So let’s say that one day the Nepalese get sick of people coming to their mountain and leaving gross stuff like trash, human poop and dead bodies up there. The new rule - nobody is permitted to make the ascent, the summit is completely off limits to any and all. The rule will be enforced by nutters in yeti suits.
Rich spoiled people who have no regards for lives in remote third world countries would have to do something else in their bucket lists, which all tend to be a step down in braggability. How will their fragile egos survive?
“Because it’s there” is no trivial reason but one that appeals to the deepest feelings of humankind. The summit is the highest place on Earth and that’s all that really needs to be said as an explanation.
Why people get so opinionated about Everest is strange to me. More people die surfing than climbing Everest, and nobody talks about surfing being a horrible activity.
I have a close relative who used to live in Nepal (he is back in the States now), and while there spent a lot of time in the foothills of Everest and with the back country peoples there.
Per him it is quite despicable how the local folk and the Sherpa are treated by all the climbers.
I get the impression that very few people truly have the “because it’s there” motivation. If climbers were sworn to secrecy about the whole endeavor, I think there would be very significantly fewer climbers.
It’s not because it’s there, it’s so they can brag about it afterwards. There’s not many people out there who would do that and then never tell a soul that they did it.
It seems the ultimate manifestation of First World privilege to me, to be honest. In poor countries people live in fear of the dangerous unregulated activities involved in scratching out a living. Few expect to make it to old age without serious injury from their daily job, whether inhaling dangerous toxins, or losing a limb to a medieval wood mill, etc. Should they die from their job there is little or no compensation, their family will be left destitute, in the street. Their children will be preyed upon or sold or become beggars.
To them, risking life and limb, the breadwinner of the family, just to say they ‘climbed Everest’ is unbelievably foolish. Especially since the ‘personal challenge’ that makes them so proud involves paying for guides who put up camps and cook, (not to mention providing life saving aid should it be required!), permanently afixed ladders and ropes, on a decades old, well worn route. ‘Well worn’ meaning thoroughly abused, strew with garbage, polluted with far too much human waste, and the size of small villages.
Nepal actually represents one of the most disturbing records of international Aid. There have been innumerable western aid organizations operating there for literally decades, yet very little has changed for the Nepalese. Access for tourists and climbers has though. Aid orgs top personnel often openly live like kings, and spend lots of time pursuing mountaineering and adventuring while little impact is realized for the poorest people in Nepal. It’s changing now but it was so, for far too long.
The West has cared little about the royal family being slaughtered, the rise of radicalism in politics or even relief after a devastating earthquake. But we still hear about who’s climbing that mountain. Disabled people even! At enormous cost and danger to numerous lives.
Straight up First World privilege, in my humble opinion.
I politely disagree with this. I knew more than one Cameroonian villager set off on a wild adventure for no better reason than to try it out. I met a random Cameroonian in Mali who hitchhiker across West Africa just to see what’s out there. A guy I knew spend a couple years in the rainforest apprenticing with a Pygmy sorcerer/healer, because he thought they were kind of neat.
I was even surprised to find subcultures of people who put on loincloths and hang out in the bush foraging on the weekends, out of pure nostalgia for the past. Basically, an African version of Civil War reeinactors.
Foolhardy adventure and other silliness is, as far as I can tell, universal. While for many Sherpas it is purely financial, many are avid mountain climbers and going to the summit, rather than staying at a lower camp, is a role they often fight for.
Heck, I don’t know if any Nepalese do it, but Tibetans have an intense tradition of long, dangerous pilgrimages, walking months on end through dangerous terrain to visit obscure shrines. People pull crazy stunts everywhere.
Surfers don’t tend to get other people drowned along with them, though. And if they do, it’s not desperately poor people who are carrying their surf boards because it’s one of the few ways open to them to make decent money.
Serious question: I was under the impression that the Sherpas were very well paid and tended to be breadwinners for their extended families. I do not contest that th appeal for the jobs is quite like paying people in very poor areas to make good wages being a coal miner, crab fisherman, or some other hazardous job. But you seem to be calling the Sherpas themselves desperately poor, so I just want to dispel my ignorance if needed.
Agreement. And golfing is far more harmful to the environment, but it’s a cost our society is willing to tolerate, because (1) it’s good business, and (2) a lot of people want to do it.
Yes, this is a good point. Half of the mountain is in China. If one company cuts off ascents, then the other one stands to rake in the dough via a monopoly.
It’s not just fame. Most people’s sense of self-worth is tied to their achievements. Even if they never tell anyone they climbed Everest, *they’ll *know they climbed Everest, and for many people, that’s enough.