A WORLD OF FIRST'S

                                               

Last week many people perished on the upper slopes of Mt Everest. They had paid, 10’s of thousands of dollars for the privilege of scaling that frozen rock high in the Himalayans. Yet, although it would be for them a personal achievement, it can never equal the risk that was taken by the pioneers in mountain climbing who were the first to go there. To be the first to attempt such a feat, just has so much more luster then to be the 2,000^thperson to do it. To have climbed it in leather boots, with nails driven through the soles to give you traction, instead of modern boots with heaters good to 50 below. Wool gloves instead of insulated Gore Tex ones. Light weight oxygen tanks instead of heavy steel cylinders or no oxygen at all. Heavy braided ropes that froze stiff as a cable compared to modern equipment. Yes, were not talking apples and apples here but it still is very dangerous.

Yet five people perished, because up there at the top of the world last week, in what has become one of the most commercialized sports around that part of the world they lost their gamble. Truth be told, they probably had no valid reasons for being there except they could afford too and wanted to do it. Many of them inexperienced and unprepared. All of the best equipment in the world won’t help you if the 100-mile an hour winds blow you off the side of the mountain. Or you get caught in an avalanche or fall into a crevice, simply to do what has been done over and over again but here is the caveat-not by you it hasn’t- and to some, therein lie’s the reasoning.

So many times climbers add restrictions to up the risk and create another first. They want to be the first person to climb the mountain in the dead of winter, or to climb it without legs or legally blind. The first octogenarian to climb it without a walker or the first to push a wheelbarrow full of frozen yak dung to the top and slide down in the barrow, there is no end to the firsts. I’m being facetious but all of this pales in comparison to the conquests of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on Everest. Or Ernest Shacklelton and his band of explorers in the Antarctica because their conquests were truly the first. While in Alaska on a vacation I talked to a guide who has climbed Denali seven times. He told me that even with all of the experience he has gained, the odds still favor the mountain in an eighth attempt but he was sure he would do it anyway.

Yet after all of this talk of the foolishness of taking these kinds of risks, while the trophies have already been passed out, I still envy these people and their spirit. If I could afford to go there I would love to just stand in Everest base camp and see the mountain or walk amongst the penguins in Antarctica. Mankind will never replicate the greatest architecture in this world that Mother Nature has made but he may destroy it and I would love to see it before that happens. My personal achievements nowadays are getting a couple of miles down the road and back with Molly and I know my limitations. Yet I still have my dreams and wishes and grandma always said, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”