When the news broke last week of a Sherpa guide miraculously surviving a sudden 300-foot fall into a crevasse on Everest, my first thought was for his family. My second, less charitable thought, was: here we go again. The number of people attempting to summit the world's tallest peak has ballooned in the past two decades, and with it, the number of tragedies.
The UK's mountaineering bodies have now called for stricter regulation, citing the guide's ordeal as evidence of a system pushed past its breaking point. But what does 'regulation' really mean when you are standing at Base Camp, your lungs sucking in a third less oxygen than they demand? Let's start with the story itself, because the human element is where these things always begin.
The guide, a man in his late thirties who has summited Everest five times, was leading a client up the southeast ridge when the ice beneath them gave way. He is alive today because his down jacket snagged on a rock outcropping. His client was less fortunate.
The rescue effort, which involved helicopters and climbers from three different expeditions, was the talk of the Khumbu region. But as the dust settles, the bigger question remains: why are we still relying on luck? The UK's major mountaineering organisations, including the British Mountaineering Council and the Alpine Club, have released a joint statement calling for mandatory minimum experience requirements for guides and a cap on the number of permits issued per season.
They argue that the current system, which in Nepal is largely self-regulated, has led to a 'culture of cowboy operators' who prioritise profit over safety. The numbers back them up. In 2019, over 800 people attempted the summit, with 11 deaths.
But 2019 was a good year. The death toll per attempt has actually decreased, but the absolute number of fatalities has risen. That is a statistical sleight of hand, a reassuring trend line that ignores the cost in human lives.
The real cultural shift, I believe, is not in the boardrooms of mountaineering clubs but in the way we commodify extreme experiences. A generation of wealthy climbers, many with little more than a weekend course in ice climbing, now treat Everest as a bucket list item. Sherpas, who earn a fraction of what their clients pay, bear the brunt of the risk.
The survivor in this story, whose name I won't use out of respect for his family's privacy, is now facing a lifetime of medical bills and trauma. He is the human cost of our appetite for the sublime. What this probe should focus on, then, is not just the technicalities of rope work and oxygen use, but the social contract of extreme tourism.
When we pay someone to carry our dream, what do we owe them in return? The new regulations, if they come, will be a start. But the thin air of Everest is matched by the thinness of our collective conscience.
We need to look down from the summit and see the people who hold the ropes.
