A guide’s miraculous survival on Everest has, predictably, triggered a bout of fevered handwringing from British expedition leaders. They demand regulation, as if the mountain were a municipal swimming pool needing lifeguards. Let us not mistake this for genuine concern.
It is the reflex of a managerial class that believes all risks must be eliminated by paper and pen. The tragedy is not the near-miss but the delusion that Everest can be made safe. The mountain has always killed the reckless and sometimes the prudent.
Its allure is precisely its danger. To regulate Everest is to scrub the romance from climbing, to replace adventure with bureaucracy. Yes, there are jackals posing as guides.
But the solution is not state intervention. It is the good sense of climbers and the market’s ability to reward competence. The Victorians understood that some endeavours demand personal responsibility, not government handholding.
We have become a nation of safety-consumers, terrified of our own mortality. Let the mountain be. If you cannot face the risk, stay at base camp with a thermos of tea.
