In a tale that has inspired millions of armchair adventurers and appalled every insurance adjuster in the Home Counties, a British climber has pulled off what is being breathlessly described as a ‘miracle’ self-rescue on the southern slopes of Mount Everest. The man, whose name we shall withhold until his publisher confirms the film rights, apparently fell into a crevasse, broke his leg, and then crawled, limped, and possibly swore his way back to base camp using only a walking stick, a bag of Bombay Mix, and the sheer force of his own misplaced arrogance.
Let us be clear: this is not a miracle. A miracle is when water turns into wine or when a politician tells the truth. This is a man who paid sixty grand to stand on a frozen corpse ladder, got himself into a perfectly predictable scrape, and then did the bare minimum required to not die. But in the fevered imagination of the British press, this is a triumph of grit, a testament to the bulldog spirit, and a ringing endorsement of the stiff upper lip.
The details, as far as they can be separated from the froth of hyperbole, are as follows. Our hero, a man whose brain is clearly not his most used muscle, decided to press on to the summit despite a ‘niggly knee’. At 8,000 metres, where the air is thin and common sense thinner, he fell into a crevasse. He then spent five hours hauling his busted frame out of the ice, using his ice axe as a crutch and his own urine as a lubricant (I made that last bit up, but it fits the tone). He then descended for three days, hallucinating about roast dinners and warm pints, before collapsing at base camp and being helicoptered to Kathmandu.
And for this, he is a hero? Let me tell you what a real hero is: a hero is the sherpa who had to carry his stupid rucksack. A hero is the doctor who patched him up without vomiting from the smell. A hero is the man who stays home and doesn’t clog up the NHS with self-inflicted frostbite. But no, we must celebrate the one who ignored all warnings, pushed beyond his limits, and then had the audacity to survive.
The language used by the reporting classes is a masterpiece of misdirection. ‘Grit’ is just a euphemism for stubbornness. ‘Determination’ is what you call it when someone refuses to admit they’ve made a terrible mistake. And ‘miracle’? That’s the word you use when you want to sell a book. Expect the inevitable memoir within eighteen months, titled ‘Ice and Indomitability’ or ‘The Summit Within’ or some such tripe. It will be ghostwritten by a hack from the Daily Mail and will contain zero mention of the sherpa who actually did the rescuing.
Meanwhile, in the real world, climate change is melting the glaciers, the climbing routes are turning into rivers of sludge, and the mountain is littered with the detritus of similar ‘triumphs’. But never mind all that. Let us instead lionise a man who fell into a hole and managed to get out again. Well done, sir. You have done what any reasonably competent goat could do. Now please, for the love of all that is holy, stay at sea level and take up golf.
