In a development that has sent tremors through the tweed-clad corridors of the Alpine Club, a professional guide has been plucked from the death zone of Everest after six days of what can only be described as an extended, involuntary bivouac. The rescue, a feat of aviation and nerve, has prompted UK mountaineering bodies to review their safety protocols. Or, as I suspect, to craft a sternly worded memo about the importance of not dying on the world's highest rubbish tip.
The guide, whose name has been withheld pending notification of next of kin (and possibly a lawyer), was discovered by a helicopter crew who braved winds that would make a seagull weep. He was found at 8,000 metres, a zone where the air is thin and common sense is thinner. According to sources, he had been surviving on a diet of snow, desperation, and the dried apricots he'd been saving for a special occasion. This, one must assume, qualified.
Now, the UK mountaineering bodies are 'reviewing protocols.' A phrase that should strike terror into the heart of every bureaucrat. This typically means a committee will be formed, terms of reference drawn up, and a series of meetings held in a room with poor ventilation. The outcome will be a document, bound in a tasteful shade of beige, that recommends 'greater awareness of the risks' and 'improved communication between teams.' In other words, the usual combination of platitudes and finger-wagging.
But let us be honest. The problem is not a lack of protocols. The problem is that Everest has become a club for people with more money than sense, a queue for the summit where the queue itself kills more people than the altitude. It is a circus in which the clowns have oxygen tanks and the ringmaster is a Nepali guide earning less than your plumber. The safety protocols are there to protect the operators, not the climbers. And the operators, bless their polypropylene socks, are in the business of extracting money from oxygen-starved brains.
The guide's survival for six days is a miracle, but it is also a condemnation. It is a condemnation of the commercialisation of Everest, where the phrase 'safety protocol' is as aspirational as a peak bagger's Instagram feed. It is a condemnation of the 300 people who passed him on the mountain, presumably because they had a schedule to keep and a summit selfie to take. 'Sorry mate, no time for a dying guide, the Wi-Fi is better at the top.'
So yes, review your protocols. Make them longer. Make them more detailed. But while you're at it, why not add a protocol that says 'Thou shalt not treat Everest like a bloody funfair'? Or a protocol that bans people who can't name three mountains from attempting the highest one? Or better yet, a protocol that requires climbers to have a basic understanding of the difference between a mountain and a pile of debt?
But I digress. The guide is safe. The rescue was brilliant. And the review will produce a report that will gather dust on a shelf somewhere, next to a copy of 'Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills' and a taxidermied marmot. Until the next time someone gets stranded, and we do this all over again. Because on Everest, the only constant is the queue, the only protocol is profit, and the only review is the one we never learn from.
