Stone Cold

I recently read this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/19/mount-everest-death-zone-clean) about plans to remove tons of trash and most of the frozen corpses that litter the path to the summit of Mount Everest. Foreign tourism is apparently a major source of income for impoverished Nepal and the accumulated jetsam of almost a century of assaults upon the summit have created something less than the pristine environment a wealthy American would expect to find in the inhospitable hell at the top of the world. Cleaning up the garbage is a Chamber of Commerce necessity, because nobody likes a trashy Disney World.

By most estimates there are 120 frozen bodies (give or take) of those who tried, and failed, to reach to the top, or perhaps reached the top but failed to make it back, sitting in various states of repose in the thin, frigid Himalayan air. Since it is something of a superhuman effort to even drag oneself up and down the shear face of Everest, if you croak up there, chances are ain't nobody gonna' carry you down. Since the trip to the summit is fraught with dangers that range from the lack of oxygen, to the fragile, slippery ice, to psychotic Yeti, there is a measurable probability that you will not return. Perhaps that is what makes it such a popular vacation spot.

Humans have been trying to attain the pinnacle of Everest since the 1921expedition led by Colonel Charles Howard-Bury, which was repulsed by the weather 6,000 feet short of their objective. That expedition included George Mallory, who may actually have been the first man to reach the summit of Everest. Mallory, along with fellow climber Andrew Irvine, disappeared while making his final ascent during a subsequent expedition in June of 1924. They were last seen only a few hundred yards from the summit, but their fate remained a mystery until 1999 when Mallory's body was positively identified by an expedition which had been launched specifically for the purpose of determining his whereabouts. Ironically, Mallory was the fellow quoted by the New York Times in response to the question "why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?" as saying "because it is there." No one knows if he died on the ascent or descent. In 1953 Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, reached the summit late on the morning of May 29^th. Hillary, a New Zealander, was knighted by the newly minted Queen Elizabeth II. Norgay, I assume, went back to his slate-roofed hut to endure life without the Order of the British Empire.

I'm not much for mountain climbing myself. I really don't understand the fascination with dangerous pursuits which yield no practical results. Living is itself a risky proposition, and there is an absolute ironclad guarantee that each of us will fall victim to some fatal occurrence during the course of our lives, so to me death-defying feats are really just a form of impatience. I suppose I do to some extent envy those who are able to generate the commitment necessary to endure the hardship inherent in walking to the edge of outer space, something I doubt I would ever be able to do, but perhaps all of this obsessive determination might be better directed towards something more generally beneficial.

We humans are risk takers and restless wanderers who have been driven for hundreds of thousands of years by the prospect that there might be something better over the next hill or across the next river, but there are those rare individuals who accept risks simply to try and discover something better within themselves. I know that friends and family want the closure of a real corpse to bury and the comfort of a resting place to visit, and the Nepalese surely don't want any unpleasant scenery to dampen anybody's spending urge, but if I am Nepal, I carry off the Snickers wrappers and leave all the dead where they fell. Frozen gods in their palaces of ice, haunting the slopes of Everest like Everest haunted their living dreams; both a grim reminder of the mortality of man, and an eternal monument to giving death the finger.