As a Climber of Mountains, I Can't Get My Head Around the Everest Economy

It's easiest to say that Mount Everest itself killed the 12 Sherpa guides lost last week in an avalanche on the mountain's south flank. Mountains, monstrous sleeping entities, claim lives—it's the poetry of the backcountry. Part of that poetry is the mythologization of the Sherpa and others—particularly non-white, ethnic Others—that work and live in that backcountry, whether they're doing the crushing, tedious work of hauling gear to Everest base camp or more elite tasks like setting ropes high on the mountain, as the Sherpa team was doing last week when many tons of ice and snow broke loose above it. But Everest isn't just a mountain, it's an industry—a very flush industry sustained entirely by foreigners.

Let's here start with the Sherpa end of the deal. From The New York Times:

According to National Geographic, the figure goes up dramatically for an elite Sherpa climber: $4,000 to $5,000 per two month season. It's more than a Sherpa might make potato farming, but within the larger industry picture, it's still a pittance.

So, the industry. It's no longer possible to really climb Mount Everest "on your own." You can't just show up at base camp one April with a mountain of gear and expect to just handle things, no matter the preparation. There are only two routes to the summit and they've become totally dominated by commercial expeditions, outfits that offer packaged trips to wealthy Westerners with the promise to deliver them "as high as possible." The requirements, besides money, are pretty much limited to showing up. A Google survey just now found that of the first three commercial Everest expedition outfits to come up, only one made a point of asking for prior fitness and mountaineering experience.

Any big mountain expedition will cost a lot of money, just considering gear and travel. The Everest industry is a bit different though: it's taken the inherent financial barrier to entry for an expedition on Everest (or any other 8,000 meter peak) and turned the Everest climb into a luxury good. Alan Arnette, a climber and speaker who raises money for Alzheimer's research, has a very good breakdown on the costs of doing an Everest climb. The bottom-line is that you're to spend a minimum of $24,000 for a totally unsupported "solo" climb, with mandatory costs involving rope and ladder usage on either of the summit routes and the severe climbing fees imposed by either government, Nepal or Tibet, of around $10,000. A commercial expedition then ranges in price from $30,000 all the way up to $100,000. Per person.

According to Arnette, those costs cover the basics: "climbing permit, liaison officer, visa, park fee, yaks, porters, icefall ladders and fixed ropes, waste deposit, travel, insurance, tents, food and fuel." Add a Western guide for $10,000, travel for $5,000, gear for $7,000, and misc. expenses touching $35,000 in random stuff, like a personal satellite phone. Then there's being gone for two months to a very remote location. That in itself is the privilege of only the very wealthy (though, if you remember from Into Thin Air, Doug Hansen, one of many fatalities in the 1996 Everest tragedy, was just a regular guy deep into mountaineering that worked two jobs all year to be able to afford an Everest trip).

I understand Hansen more than the other, far more wealthy customers of the Everest industry. Climbing was his life, much like it is with the class of mountaineers that he was paying; Hansen just never made it into the deep elite, nor do most people that love and are very good at scaling mountains. For Hansen, Everest would have been an exclamation mark on a mountaineering life. On the flipside, the 1996 expedition was also marked by inexperienced clients, which is the part I don't get, the desire to climb the wildest place on Earth in the most controlled, unwild conditions imaginable.

Sherpas are more than guides on Mount Everest; they're also buffers. Part of the danger of mountains is instability, whether or not the particularly sketchy cornice that you look at all season is going to snap on this one day, hitting the mountaineers below like a line of buses rolling down a cliff face. The paid climbers that follow find a route of food- and oxygen-stocked campsites, fixed ropes, and bootpacked trails. They might even have their very own Sherpa right there beside them, ready to place their client's feet in just the right places should the climb go south, as it did in 1996.

I'm not much of a climber, but I do know why I like it. I like the feeling of being around things that aren't very controlled, like mountains, and I like the feeling of discovering something way out there and/or up there for myself, and also just the sublime misery of putting one foot in front of the other again and again no matter how bad it hurts. I also like being self-sufficient or being in an environment where I can imagine that being the case. Doing something for yourself, even something that's entirely trivial like going up a peak, is one of the best things we can strive for as technological weirdos. If you haven't done that lately, I can't really recommend it enough. The first rule is that it should be free.