The Hindu : Magic and the mountain

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 23, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Magic and the mountain

THE CELEBRATIONS TO mark the 50th anniversary of the first successful attempt to scale Mount Everest have a diverse and multi-faceted nature. At one level, it is an occasion for nostalgia, to look back with affection and wonder on the journey Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made to the world's pinnacle where they planted a stick bearing the flags of India, Nepal, Britain and the United Nations on May 29, 1953. At another level, it has provided mountaineers attached to dozens of expeditions the opportunity to scale the world's highest peak as a mark of respect for that historic ascent. And finally, the celebrations provide a context to ruminate on questions about which there are no clear answers (and perhaps never will be). What is responsible for that special magic that mountains exercise on the minds of men and women? What precisely is it that drives people to flirt with death, to test their endurance to the very limits and spend their entire lives on the pursuit of scaling (more and more) peaks? What is it that makes mountaineering emblematic of the courage, strength, resolve and everything else that stands for the best in mankind?

It is true that much has changed since the days of Hillary and Tenzing. For instance, mountaineering gear has vastly improved, taking some of the exertion out of the climb. Today's much more organised expeditions run lower risks as they have a better chance of receiving help (from a helicopter or another expedition) if something happens to go wrong. Reports from the Everest Base Camp, from where two Indian expeditions reached the summit and from where others will begin (or have already begun) their climb to the top, suggest that it wears the appearance of a tent city, with such facilities as a medical clinic, a makeshift bar and a cyber cafe. But the fact that large numbers of people attempt to climb Everest now does not mean, as some people mistakenly conclude, that this magnificent mountain has been reduced to an adventure tourism site, a trap for the traveller looking for something out of the ordinary. To scale the peak the Sherpas know as Chomlungma (Goddess Mother of the World) is a formidable task and the statistics more than bear it out. Only one in 10 persons who have attempted to scale Everest has made it to the top. Moreover, almost 180 people have died on its fickle and treacherous slopes beginning with George Mallory and Sandy Irvine in 1924; as many as 15 mountaineers were killed during the 1996 season, a tragic reminder of the fast-moving jet stream winds and severe climactic changes that can cause sudden and unexpected life-threatening situations.

One reason why Everest continues to pose a challenge is that climbers have continuously sought to impose additional challenges on themselves. Seeking out a more arduous route is not the only one of such impositions. For instance, in 1980, two mountaineers set out to scale the peak without supplementary oxygen and succeeded. Exactly two decades later, Babu Chiri Sherpa made it from base camp to summit in less than 17 hours, a record that has not been broken yet. One of the problems of the continued and undiminished interest in climbing Everest has been pollution and degradation — a problem that continues despite recent efforts by environmental expeditions to remove decades of trash left by a string of expeditions. The proposal to build more tourist facilities close to the foot of the mountain, on both the Chinese and the Nepali sides, poses another kind of threat to the peak. The pristine nature of Everest when Hillary and Tenzing climbed it can never be fully restored, but it is doubtful whether this will substantially reduce the spell it casts on popular imagination or the seductive charm it holds for the serious mountaineer. Everest will always be a challenge because it is the world's tallest mountain and (to echo Mallory's famous quip) because it is there.

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