Climbing the Often-lethal Slopes of Mount Everest – Feat or Folly? – Tim Johnson
Tim Johnson has published a series of reports based on his trip to Tibet, for which he was reprimanded by the Foreign Ministry upon his return. The reports, from Everest Base Camp, focus on the travails of climbing the world’s highest peak:
The violent and icy landscape of Mount Everest has become a magnet for a blend of commercial interests, individual achievement and runaway vanity, turning the peak into a venue of bravery and folly, a place where egos rise in thin air and life can evanesce like oxygen.
Hundreds of climbers from 30 nations are on the slopes of the 29,035-foot Mount Everest for this year’s 10-week climbing season. As of Wednesday, about 50 reached the summit.
Scaling the jagged peak is a brutal feat. Climbers must acclimate their bodies to thin air that contains only a third as much oxygen as air at sea level. Fierce winds and huge temperature drops occur routinely. Death stalks the ill-equipped. Yet people are arriving for the trek in ever-greater numbers, lured by the low cost of climbing from Tibet. [Full text]
