I was on Mount Everest the day the viral photo was taken, but I had very different experience
Updated
The viral photograph of the summit ridge of Mt Everest on May 22 this year — completely crowded with people waiting to summit and with no way down but to reverse-climb that line — stirs anxiety and urgent questions.
There is only a third of the amount of oxygen on the summit and the weather on Everest at that altitude is cold and windy. It is dangerous to spend too much time there. If you are moving too slowly, your oxygen will run out.
You don't have to be a mountaineer to see that image and to feel the fear.
It happened to me once.
The weather forecast was for very cold temperatures and very high winds. It was the middle of the night and the line of climbers was hardly moving and we began radioing each other discussing what to do.
It was decided that if the weather didn't change, or if it got any colder, we would turn around.
Having a strategy to manage these situations is the difference between life and death. All of the sherpas and guides had ice axes and we had techniques for managing an unscheduled descent with and without the fixed lines.
Just as we decided to escape, the temperature became warmer, and the line started to move quite well. We stayed on the mountain and reached the summit.
Problems like these are often caused by weather — bad weather or short windows for climbing, and then the danger is obviously overcrowding.
A tale of two ascents
On the same day that the viral photo was taken last week, I was on the other side of Mount Everest, climbing to the summit for the sixth time.
In 1988, I was the first woman to climb Mount Everest without oxygen, something only six women have achieved. Since then I have worked as a mountaineer guide — helping clients make their ascent of the world's highest peaks, including Everest.
This trip was my first ascent from the northern, Tibetan side of the mountain.
My small team of four — me, my client Roxanne Vogel, and our two sherpas Mingma and Pasang — climbed behind the rope-fixers.
Roxanne made this ascent of Everest within 10 days of arriving in China — a world first.
Most climbers spent weeks acclimatising but she was able to achieve this "lightning ascent" with a year of intense physical training, hypoxic training, climbing volcanoes, using a high-end operator and paying for lots and lots of oxygen as well as a private guide (me).
When we reached the summit at dawn on the morning of the 22nd we were the only climbers on Everest coming from Tibet. We had no idea that on the other side of the mountain huge crowds were on their way from Nepal.
This is not to say that the northern side is always crowd-free.
On May 23, the day after our ascent, many people attempted the summit from Tibet and there was a sad death from a heart attack on the descent as well as the rescue of Australian man Gilian Lee.
Bodies from another season
As we climbed, we passed three human bodies — a reminder of the dangers.
In spite of this being my sixth ascent, I had not often seen bodies during a climb.
These bodies were from another season, still tangled in old ropes.
I asked Mingma if we should cut them down to get them off the path and he said no, it was more respectful to leave them there.
The three bodies all had the same coloured suits and I wondered if they were all from the same team.
I feel my huge amount of experience and excellent support team significantly reduces the risk of getting sick or dying. I know how to turn around on the mountain, I can read my own oxygen bottle to be sure I don't run out, I can abseil on my own and climb without fixed ropes. I can probably get a client down the same way. I have communications and help from an experienced sherpa who also has access to plenty of oxygen.
And I make a point of not climbing on very crowded days. Once by accident was enough.
Safety has a price
To a certain extent, on Everest, the more you pay the more support you can get. This means more of your equipment is carried by sherpas, which crucially includes more tanks of oxygen.
But you still have to be physically fit enough to climb the mountain. Wearing crampons (spikes) on your feet, and scrambling up steep rocks and snow is not easy.
The simple technique of using a fixed rope as a handrail rather than literally pulling oneself up the mountain on a thin (possibly breakable) cord, demands skill and experience — skills seldom considered in the race for the summit.
Tragically, this season 11 climbers died attempting this life-changing feat.
A fine line between death and rescue
Seeing bodies is a very sobering reminder of our fragile grasp on life at extreme altitudes.
It also raises very important ethical questions about the "code of conduct" among climbers: if someone is in trouble do we stop and help, or not?
This is an emotional question.
I was part of the first ascent by a New Zealand team of Dhaulagiri — the world's seventh-highest mountain at 8,167m.
On summit day, we passed a team who asked us to keep an eye out for a man and his sherpa who had been missing for three nights.
We found him alive, gave him some water and continued our climb to the summit. Five hours later — after returning from the summit — we picked him up and descended with him.
Postponing rescue like this is against one's instinctive response to grant help.
However, this man's team had not gone up again to look for him — he had been left there. His team did not have enough sherpa staff and those staff were overworked. They did not have enough oxygen to give someone four litres to walk up to find him.
This situation had already cost the life of a sherpa who stayed with the man and gave up his oxygen supply. Waiting for this man left another eight people with life-changing frostbite — the loss of almost all fingers and or toes. This happened in excellent summit weather.
If the mountain is full of that level of self-responsibility, what is your benchmark for self-sacrifice? These are extremely tricky questions that echo years later.
Crowds not the only danger
Overcrowding on the Nepali side of the mountain has occurred more often in recent seasons as more people are granted permits to attempt the summit.
But this year there were more complications.
The climbing season lasts only a couple of weeks from late-May to mid-June. Monsoon season from June to September closes the mountain to climbers and many avoid October.
Bad weather reduced the number of summit days available to climb this forcing the 300 or so registered climbers to make their summit attempts over only three or four days.
But sheer numbers climbing the mountain is not the only reason for the crowding.
The range of experience of the Everest climbers is also another reason that the line of climbers is not moving along at speed.
It is quite common now that people attempting Everest have never climbed a peak over 7,000m and some — not many peaks at all.
Nepal vs Tibet
Typically, there are fewer climbers on the Tibet side because China limits the number of people on the north side and has reduced the different number of nationalities on each expedition. This used to be a cheaper way to climb but I believe it has just become slightly more expensive.
Climbing via Tibet or Nepal are different experiences requiring different skills.
On the north side it is a long, tough climb, along a ridge. It is impossible to bring the bodies down the mountain.
This means that if you become sick on the northern side on summit day, things can become a lot more serious than on the Nepali side.
The Nepali side is steep snow. But it is feasible to get a sick person down from high up on Everest on this side.
The "danger" of the Nepal side is going (repeatedly) through the Khumbu Icefall between Base Camp and Camp 2 at 6,400m.
On the Northern Tibetan side, you can walk along and up a glacier to Advance Base Camp — the equivalent of Camp 2 at 6,400m, and you can even take yaks to ABC/6,400m on the North side.
In contrast, the "danger" of the north side comes on summit day.
Once you gain the ridge at 8,500m on summit day, the journey travels along a rocky ridge with lots of tricky technical moves. There are three huge rock steps requiring ropes and ladders, and lots of traversing on sloping rocky ledges.
When there is crowding on the Tibetan side there are "bottlenecks" at the rock steps.
Getting a sick person down this terrain would be near impossible.
The lure of the mountain
What drives us to reach the highest point in the world is the same as what enthuses us to climb to a viewpoint alongside any road — curiosity, passion or even obsession.
Climbing Everest without oxygen is a purist approach, the epitome of high-altitude climbing.
Very few people can climb Everest without oxygen, or have even tried, and it remains one of the more elite goals for a high-altitude mountaineer.
Bear in mind however, many people who are extremely good mountaineers would not try to climb Everest without oxygen and would instead focus on being the first to conquer more remote or steeper ascents.
I have never tried to climb again without oxygen. It's hard. You need experience, experience, experience: having attempted the Seven Summits isn't sufficient training for this kind of mountaineering.
But beyond high-altitude climbing experience, you also need good footwork, good self-management and understanding of when you might need to turn back. A good ability to naturally acclimatise also helps too.
But as a guide, I must always use oxygen as the climb is not about me, it's about keeping my client safe, healthy and hopefully successful. To do it we need O2, boot heaters, good radio communication between guides and lots of sherpas carrying lots of oxygen.
The oxygen equation
Availability of oxygen becomes a key safety question when climbers are trapped in queues at the summit. Some companies don't provide enough oxygen to stay safe when things go wrong.
This becomes a question of cost and many people decide to save the money. The cost of getting a canister of oxygen to the summit can easily run to US$1,000 and possibly more. Each climber would be wise to take three to four litres to use the day before summit day and then a further four litres for summit day.
Sherpas who carry all that spare oxygen need about half of that amount.
Better preparation, more oxygen and a good support team are all vital to a safe ascent.
But these don't solve the problem of crowding. The climbing season is very short. By early June the Khumbu Icefall becomes hard to get up and down and by mid-June the monsoon begins and a lot of snowfalls. Climbing stops until early September.
When I started climbing the Himalayas, a lot of expeditions left for the summit pre and post-monsoon. Hardly anyone climbs Everest post-monsoon these days yet there is a whole season available from September to October. I did my 1988 climb without oxygen on October 16.
Perhaps the answer is to spread the attempts out across two seasons.
Because despite the dangers, Everest the mountain speaks for itself: it is a monolith, a journey, the epitome of big nature, a place where decision-making tests the human mind, a climb where should the oxygen regulator fail, most mere mortals would have to work with others to save their own lives, a place where small details display extreme loveliness, a hill of such extreme height that the view is no longer just about looking out — but being on the mountain.
On Everest, the view is outwards, and inwards.
No-one can take away the summit of a mountain once it is inside you; nor the excitement one feels if warm, strong and with skill, you've made to the top of Everest — and back down again, safely.
Lydia Bradey is a mountaineer and guide. In 1988 she was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest without oxygen.
Topics: lifestyle-and-leisure, travel-and-tourism, travel-health-and-safety, disasters-and-accidents, australia, nepal, china
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