In Tibet, they call it “Goddess, Mother of the Earth”. In Nepal, they call it Sagarmatha, meaning “Goddess of the Sky” or “Peak of Heaven”. Everyone else knows it as Mount Everest, at 8,849 meters (29,031 ft), the highest mountain in the world.
The name is synonymous with mountaineering. There are few people anywhere who would not recognise the name Mount Everest, a name of legend that attracted and continues to attract the world’s most famous climbers, and some not-so-famous ones too. In the future, however, the achievement in climbing the mountain may rely on technology. To an uncomfortable extent.
It follows the revelation that two sets of climbers used technology to help them make ascents that would previously have been thought impossible, going from sea level to the top of the world’s highest summit in less than a week.
The mountaineering death zone
The technologies are the use of xenon gas and hypoxic tents, which mean that climbers do not have to spend several weeks acclimatising at a lower altitude, typically at Everest Base Camp, so the body can adjust to the lower level of oxygen. A failure to acclimatise means climbers are at risk of illness or death. Without this acclimatisation, most climbers risk sickness or death in the final stages of climbing the world’s highest peaks, like Everest, K2, or Kangchenjunga, due to the thin oxygen levels above 8,000 meters, which has been labelled the “death zone”.
But by using the new methods and technologies, the successful teams were able to acclimatise before even arriving on the mountain in Nepal, meaning they could skip Base Camp completely.
Some expedition leaders have justified these pre-acclimatisation methods by saying they “mark a new frontier in Everest mountaineering, increasing safety while reducing the two biggest blights on the mountain: rubbish and human waste”, as the Guardian newspaper put it.
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By GlobalDataBut this suggestion stretches credibility longer than a stretched climbing rope. No one is surely seriously using these technologies with climate change and protecting the mountain in mind. It is all about the race to the top.
The peak of success
(Edmund) Hillary and Tenzing (Norgay). (George) Mallory and (Andrew) Irvine. These are the names associated with Everest. Hillary and Tenzing because they conquered it in 1953, Mallory and Irvine because, the likelihood is, they didn’t manage it in 1924, despite making a summit bid.
What was legendary about the Mallory and Irvine bid was that no one knew whether they had climbed the mountain or not. Their disappearance led to considerable speculation about whether they reached the summit, and it remains one of the most enduring mysteries in mountaineering history.
“Because it’s there,” was the famous quote from Mallory when asked by a reporter in 1924 why he was climbing Everest. It is a reply as pure and unadorned as much of the climbing gear that Mallory and his fellow climbers wore in 1924. That is not to say that climbers in 1924 did not use climbing aids, like oxygen. They did.
However, the level of equipment was primitive in comparison to the use of Xenon gas or hypoxic tents. An aid to help breathing on the mountain is one thing. An artificial aid that means you can create low oxygen environments to get the body to adapt to the same conditions as high on the mountain is entirely another.
On the other hand, advocates for those who use hypoxic tents say they are using them to climb more safely and that a climb is “each person’s own accomplishment and how they choose to use this technology is up to them.”
There is a picture in the aforementioned The Guardian article of four climbers standing on the summit of Everest less than a week after leaving London. That they reached the summit of Everest and got down safely is a huge achievement in itself. Even with the technological aids, you still have to have the climbing skills, the determination, and the fortitude to get up, get down, and get back safely. But it is surely a reasonable argument that their names will never be etched in the history of Everest the way Mallory’s and Irvine’s or Hillary’s or Tenzing’s are.
Mountaineering and the economy
Given that Tibet’s and Nepal’s economy relies on mountain trekking, it is no surprise that the country’s 29,000 ft Himalayan mountain is revered as “Goddess, Mother of the Earth” and “Goddess of the Sky”.
It is equally understandable that if there is increased use of technology that facilitates climbing, this might attract more inexperienced, novice climbers who lack the skills to climb complex routes at high altitudes, and who would simply be putting themselves at risk.
Khimlal Gautam, surveyor of the team that measured the new height of Everest in 2019, argues, “Now is finally the time to develop a firm code of ethics for mountaineering.” Two expeditions found Mallory’s body in 1999, and Irvine’s partial remains in 2024. The mystery of whether they reached the summit in 1924, against the odds, still remains. It is, perhaps, the very purity of their bid that stirs the soul, and which counts much more than the modern technology that may deliver greater certainty of climbing success.
