Life-Risky Mountain Climbing

"I sat Yasuko down in Beck's lap," Madsen recalls, "but he was pretty unresponsive by that time, and Yasuko wasn't moving at all.  A little later I saw that she'd laid down flat on her back, with snow blowing into her hood.  Somehow she'd lost a glove - her right hand was bare and her fingers were curled up so tightly you couldn't straighten them.  It looked like they were pretty much frozen to the bone.

"I assumed she was dead", Madsen continues.  "But then a while later she suddenly moved, and it freaked me out; she sort of arched her neck slightly, as if she was trying to sit up, and her right arm came up, then that was it.  Yasuko lay back down and never moved again."  Jon Krakauer: Into Thin Air

A lot of people have died on Mount Everest in the Himalaya.  And on that expedition-crowded day of May 10, 1996 a record number died in one day; it represented the deadliest season in the history of Mount Everest.  Jon Krakauer, an experienced summitteer, wrote of his experiences on that fateful day, up the mountain and within the 'Death Zone' above 25,000 feet where extreme cold and exhaustion, and high winds and oxygen-depletion took its toll.


History has a habit of repeating itself.  There was a 'traffic jam' on that fateful day in May, the most auspicious month for such ascents, and considered to be the optimum climbing season, and a similar situation that revealed itself in May of 2012, sixteen years later.  Five people died on Everest this week.  Weather conditions were atrocious, and people were dreadfully fatigued, coming down off the peak.


A Canadian woman, Shriya Shah-Klorfine, was blown to her death off the mountain by a sudden storm.  South Korean Song Won-Bin, 44 is missing, but the Nepali government assures it it was simply "not possible for him to have survived.  A German national, Dr. Eberhard Schaaf died of altitude sickness - or alternately was swept away by an avalanche, and Chinese national Wangyi Fa was killed by the same high winds that took Ms. Shah-Klorfine, born in Nepal.


"[One man] was basically hallucinating, he took his hat off, his gloves were thrown away and then he kind of reached out and looked at me ... he kind of reached out to me, kind of in a zombie-lake fashion", related U.S. climber Jon Kedrowski to a Colorado Fox News affiliate.  Oxygen deprivation, extreme fatigue, they take their toll.

And everyone is desperately exhausted, so much so that they must concentrate on their own survival.


Ms. Shah-Klorfine, the Nepali-Canadian, 33 years of age, was summitting as an aspirational dream.  "Nothing is impossible in this world, even the word 'impossible' says 'I M POSSIBLE'!", she wrote on her website.  She was among a group of 150 climbers who grasped the opportunity of what looked like good weather ahead, to press on for the summit.


In all, there were over 300 aspirants to the top that day, Saturday, May 19th.  Altitude sickness and extreme cold took their toll at the 8,000-metre level, the "Death Zone".  This year's push to the top was marked by extremely dangerous conditions as well.  A mix of loose snow and slick surfaces as a result of the mountain's warmest spring on record.


This kind of extreme mountain climbing adventure is life-risky.  The British Medical Journal in 2006 put the death rate at one fatality for each ten successfully-concluded climbs.  Those who manage to make it to the peak experience a one-in-twenty chance they won't survive the descent.  Those who die on Everest remain there.  Over 200 dead climbers are visible from various aspects on the trails and mountain slopes.


It is an immense mountain.  With a single passage or trail or pathway in most areas which people must traverse.  With such a crowded group of mountain enthusiasts negotiating the trails, time elapses waiting for the line to thin out as each takes his/her turn at the tricky, difficult passes and climbing areas, negotiating ice and snow and geological irregularities and assistive bridges and ladders.  Waiting is dangerous.

Two Sherpas died on the mountain that day that five foreigners lost their lives.  The Sherpas perished in the service of those who come to the region to challenge their own nature and endurance and that of the mountain.  The Sherpas died in an effort to make a living for themselves and their families.

There is a vital time limit for ascending and descending to minimize danger.  And danger is always present.  Five climbers dead in 2012; eight climbers who died in the blizzard of 1996 that Jon Krakauer wrote of.