Analyzing The Survival Topic as a Prime Concern and Ascending Mount Everest

Survival is Number One

At over twenty nine thousand feet above sea level, Mount Everest is the highest peak in the world. Since the first summit of the world’s highest peak in 1953, many climbers have been attempting to climb Everest. Usually, a summit is reached by a group of climbers guided by a highly skilled guide and with Sherpas’ assistance. Although the group consists of many people, the world’s highest peak is still extremely challenging to reach and has consumed a lot of casualties. This is because climbers not only have to climb as high as the altitude that a commercial airline flies; they also have to overcome the harsh condition of the mountain at the same time. They have to climb in subzero temperature with extremely strong winds. Adding to that is the difficulty of breathing in an atmosphere with very thin oxygen content, breathing in “thin air”. Thus, many people have lost their life in their attempt to reach the world’s highest peak. This leads to the ethical dilemma of leaving a sick climber behind to continue for the summit, or halting and helping the sick climber. The risk of helping injured climbers is too high; they risk of wasting the huge amount of money that they paid and their risk of dying on the mountain will increase greatly. Therefore, expeditions should not be halted in order to save climbers who are suffering from life threatening altitude sickness such as HAPE, AMS and HACE.

HAPE or High Altitude Pulmonary Edema is a medical condition that causes fluid to build up in the lungs. This causes less oxygen intake to the rest of the body. As a result death is very likely to occur. Another altitude illness, HACE or High Altitude Cerebral Edema is the ending stage of AMS, Acute Mountain Sickness. HACE is a condition where the brain swells due to high altitude and AMS is a sickness when climbers ascent too rapidly. These conditions are very serious and often lead to death. The study also shows that high altitude sickness is one of the main causes of death on Mount Everest (Basnyat and Murdoch). Halting the expedition and spending too much time on Everest will increase the risk of suffering from these kinds of serious and fatal high altitude sickness. Helping another sick climber could potentially put them all in the same situation, suffering from high altitude sickness. Therefore, expeditions should not be halted to rescue endangered climbers in order to minimize the risk of suffering from high altitude sickness.

Another reason why time is crucial in Everest is the unpredictability of the weather in Everest. No one can predict the outcome of nature. On Everest, the weather is unpredictable and nobody knows what may come in his way. One example of the unpredictability of Everest is when Krakauer was caught in a hurricane and said: “But in that brief span the storm abruptly metastasized into a full-blown hurricane, and the visibility dropped to less than twenty feet” (215). Krakauer experienced the unpredictability of nature when the weather changed in a just matter of a few moments, putting him in a terrible situation. Nature is unpredictable and anything can change in any moment without anyone expecting it. One minute the weather was clear, the next minute they could be caught in a “full-blown hurricane.” Climbers’ exposure to unpredictable weather would be the least, if they reach the summit and descend as soon as possible. Therefore, climbers should not waste their time in trying to rescue other endangered climbers in order to decrease their exposure to the risk of dying.

The next reason why expeditions should not be halted is to increase the chance of success of the rest of the team when they are descending. The number of death during descent from the summit is much higher than during the ascent. From 1921 to 2006, 56% of the people who died on Everest, died during their descent from the summit and only 10% died during the ascent (Firth, Paul G., et al). From this data, it shows that a climber’s risk of dying is substantially greater when he or she is descending the summit than ascending the summit. This is true in Krakauer’s account of the 1996 Everest disaster, because all of his teammates, including Japanese climber Yasuko Namba and the group leader Rob Hall, died during the descent. Even for some very experienced climbers like Yasuko Namba and Rob Hall who had climbed some of the world’s highest peaks, the descent was still very difficult for them and it even cost them their life. Another person who also died during her descend was a Canadian Climber, Shriya Shah-Klorfine (Death on Everest).

Climbers are more vulnerable during the descent, because the ascent has already consumed a huge amount of the climbers’ energy and exhausted them. They have far more energy for reaching the summit that getting down from the summit. These climbers have to overcome the same harsh condition with much less energy. Therefore they have to be one as prepared as possible to descent the summit. Rob Hall knew that the most important part is getting down from the peak, he said: “Any bloody idiot can get up this hill, the trick is to get back down alive” (Krakauer 153). This means that the most difficult part of the journey is to make it down the peak alive. There is no meaning in reaching the peak of Everest if one will not be able to tell your conquest to people. One needs to reach the summit and make it down alive to tell the whole world what he had achieved. Therefore, it is very crucial for the climbers to reserve their most valuable resource, their energy, to reach the bottom of Everest safely. Leaving incapacitated climbers behind would greatly benefit the team, because it can contribute to the success of the rest of the team’s descent by helping the rest of the team reserve their energy for the most important part of the journey.

The last reason why expeditions should not be halted is because the rest of climbers have already paid a staggering amount of money to reach the summit. In 1996, the price to reach the summit was sixty five thousand dollars (Krakauer 27). Now it may not seem such a huge amount of money but during that year, sixty five thousand dollars the price of a Ferrari. Today, the price of reaching the summit would be even greater. Considering that climbers have already paid a huge amount of money, therefore they should get whatever they paid for, that is to reach the summit. For some of the climbers this may have been their second or third expedition, because the last attempt was not successful. Perhaps it was because the expedition was halted in order to rescue an endangered climber with an altitude sickness. Thus, having to not reach the summit again would greatly disappoint them and make them feel cheated, after paying that amount of money. One person who experienced an unsuccessful first attempt was Krakauer’s teammate, Doug Hansen, who later died during his descent. Doug Hansen was a postal worker in Washington and it takes a lot of time for a postal worker to gather that amount of money to climb Everest. Unfortunately, after finally making it to climb Everest, he failed to reach the summit in his first attempt. So, it would be very disappointing for him if he did not succeed in the next attempt, as Krakauer wrote in his book. After all the hard work it would be very devastating if he failed the next attempt. Another example is someone who went through a difficulty to come up with the money was a Canadian climber, Shriya Shah-Klorfine. She took a second mortgage on her house in order to come up with one hundred thousand dollars to reach the summit. This fee amount was excluding equipment, air ticket and tips (Death on Everest). Imagine how much more money she needed aside from the one hundred thousand dollars she gained from her mortgage. There are many more cases like these two, where people went through difficulties to pay for the summit to Everest. But regardless on how hard or easy people are coming up with money to pay for the summit, they are all paying the same huge amount of money to reach the summit. Therefore, expeditions should not be halted to rescue endangered climbers so that others who have also paid the fee can reach the summit and go home safely.

Ultimately, expeditions should not be halted in order to rescue climbers who are suffering from life-threatening sickness. The first most important reason is to ensure safety of the rest of the team and the second is to not disappoint people who have paid a staggering sum of money to reach the summit. In the future, if expeditions are not halted to rescue endangered, the success rate of descent will increase. As a result, there will be less number of death on Everest and more people will be satisfied that they are getting what they are paying thousands of dollars for. Therefore, the popularity of climbing Everest will increase and more money will be generated from the mountaineering industry for the people in Nepal. There will be more money to build more facilities such as hospitals and schools. Thus, increasing the standard of living of the people in Nepal. Not halting the expedition means not risking the life of the rest of the team. The loss of the life of one team member is much less significant that the loss of the life of the whole team.