Dying on the mountain is a mistake
Carlos Soria
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–Have you seen those images of Everest collapsed? Sito Carcavilla (49) asks me.
I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them.
–Many of us want to go, attack the mythical summit. But that circus, is it worth it to a mountaineer? Those tails are very dangerous.
-Why?
–Imagine that the wind changes and you have to get out of there. How do you do it? You’re stuck between those in front and those in the back! The images are brutal, but the worst thing is that they are here to stay.
-Why?
–Everything changed in the nineties. Until then, only one permit was granted per expedition, route and season. If a Catalan team requested permission, no other Catalan team could attack the same route in the same season. But in 95…
-What happened?
–That the restrictions were annulled and now whoever wants to can go. In 2019, about 1,400 expedition members crossed the normal Everest route in two months. And to witness that is scandalous.
Sito Carcavilla looks down and shakes his head. They alter the massification of spaces and the culture of the image.
Sito Carcavilla is a geologist and mountaineer, and writes about it. He does it in Desnivel magazine and also in Geology from the base camp, the book that he has brought me to the newsroom of La Vanguardia.
I ask you to dedicate it to me.
Write:
“I hope this book encourages you to visit these landscapes.”
(yesterday he gave a conference within the framework of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, in the Girona cinemas in Barcelona; today it is the turn of the Pou brothers: Eneko and Iker)
–But, is it so dangerous that those queues form? Does Everest claim many lives?
–Not too many. Last year six expedition members died, which are few. The accident rate is around 2% of those that make the summit. In addition, the means of rescue now are extraordinary. The helicopters soar higher and can rescue someone in Camp 2 and deliver them to the Kathmandu hospital in just one hour. The prince of Qatar summited two years ago!
–¿…?
What was your experience in the mountains? None. However, the man was looking for exclusive experiences, and that is something frequent. Many climb Everest and then go to South Africa to swim with great white sharks and then run the New York marathon…
– Do you take the photo and ready?
We live in the world we live in. And the massification of iconic places is a reality that not only happens on Everest, but everywhere. Obtaining the permit and reaching the top by the normal route can be around 50,000 euros. It’s a lot of money, but it’s also the price of a good car. How many do you know who have a good car? A few, right? Well, the same thing happens with Everest. And also, the success rate is very high, more or less than 75%.
Can anyone go up?
–People try it in a debatable state and with zero experience. Some people go up by helicopter to Camp 2. They skip the base camp! Mind you, they don’t even go all the way up the mountain.
-Who wins with this?
-Nepal. He is in the third world, and mountaineering is his main source of income. Although all this will have to come up one day.
–If everyone can climb Everest, doing so has no merit, right?
-It is that it does not have it! On a sporting level, crowning says nothing. I have done it and I do not even mention it in my history. Climbing Everest is not even for a talk. It’s like finishing a marathon in any record. It is a personal challenge. What happens is that mysticism and ignorance make promoting it something unheard of. But so far it has already been crowned 10,500 times. Another thing is to climb without oxygen or by an abnormal route.
-Well, everyone who promotes it runs to share it…
–Everest is a reflection of today’s society, where the important thing is the image, going to places that everyone knows even if they are crowded. The image is essential and you have to convey that you have done it immediately.
–And when someone dies, why does it happen to them?
–For exhaustion. Almost no one falls into the abyss because the normal route has a lot of fixed rope. And there are not many avalanches either. Who is exhausted sits down and says that he does not take another step.
-That’s terrible. What do your companions do?
–True: it is terrible because it compromises the rest. Especially the Sherpas. This spring, in Dhaulagiri, a Greek climber said that he could not take a step and the Sherpa did not know what to do, he was considering staying and dying with the climber. From the heights, he communicated with the walkie-talkie with our Sherpas (we were at the base camp) and our Sherpas put us on the line. It was us westerners who convinced the Sherpa to descend without compromising his own life. When we attack the top, we must be aware of the commitment we assume with those who accompany us. Shall I tell you another?
-Tell me…
“We summited Broad Peak and up there we saw the body of another climber. How could it have gotten there? He should have turned around sooner, don’t you think?
