please, no highway
All I can add is that when a caver goes on a camp trip in Jewel Cave, for example, he or she must accept that if someone gets hurt, a rescue might not be possible.
January 12, 2008
An Appraisal
A Mountaineer Who Defined the Notion of Heroic Explorer
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
“I was just an enthusiastic mountaineer of modest abilities,” Sir Edmund Hillary said on the 50th anniversary of his pioneering climb of Mount Everest, “an average bloke.” Even at the moment of his greatest triumph, he claimed no more. After his descent in 1953, he wrote to his mother, “Well, I may not have produced much joy or happiness in the world but at least I’ve helped make the Hillary name a bit more famous.”
Perhaps Sir Edmund, whose death this week at the age of 88 was accompanied by praise for his courage and humanity, was actually seeing things clearly. And that may help us understand something about the very notion of a heroic explorer.
First, take Sir Edmund at his word: In what way is his triumph any more than it seems? What did a climb of Mount Everest really accomplish, at what cost, and to what end? One of his predecessors, George Leigh Mallory, said he wanted to climb Everest “because it is there!” But in service to that strange nonchalant challenge, Mallory gave his life during his attempted ascent in 1924; his body was not found until 1999.
As for Sir Edmund’s successful expedition, it was no solo venture. He and his Sherpa climbing partner, Tenzing Norgay, began with 362 porters, 20 Sherpa guides and 10,000 pounds of baggage. But in their success, no new knowledge was added to humanity’s store, nobody’s life was transformed. In the decades since their climb, Everest’s summit has even become a tourist destination. In one 1993 expedition, 40 people reached the summit in a single day, more than had succeeded during the 20 years after Sir Edmund’s ascent. One 1996 photo shows a line of climbers waiting for their chance to step up to the peak.
And while Sir Edmund may have been carving out a pioneering path, look what was left in the wake of his achievement. Expeditions have been undertaken just to remove the accumulated detritus on the slopes: hundreds of oxygen containers, tons of tents, cans, crampons and waste. The bodies of the more than 100 dead climbers have not been removed; they are too heavy to carry down.
So, heroism? But Sir Edmund’s conquest, of course, was before all of this, before advances in supplies, equipment and clothing eased the physical demands, and made death more of a novelty. His account of the ascent in his book “High Adventure” (1955, Oxford University Press) is made all the more harrowing by the matter-of-fact simplicity with which he speaks of plunging crevasses, crumbling ice shelves, nights with howling winds and dwindling oxygen. He refers to the “subtle science of snow and icecraft”; it is accompanied by a steely determination. This is no slight accomplishment - testing the limits of human experience and endurance without a safety net.
Yet he keeps the entire enterprise in perspective without pretense or pomposity. “We knocked the bastard off,” Sir Edmund is reported to have said on his return, as if he had just taken part in a sporting event. He was surprised by the ecstatic welcome he received. It is still more extraordinary that the heroic image remains intact more than 50 years later, after so much has changed.
There may be something almost nostalgic in our celebration of a “heroic explorer.” Partly this is because the world has fewer and fewer unconquered spots; those who seek glory have to create ever more ornate challenges and stunts. In 2000, a Slovenian skied down from Mount Everest’s South Summit. In 2001, a Frenchman went down the more challenging North Face on a snowboard. That same year, a blind American climbed Everest. There have also been speed competitions: In 2003, it took Lakpa Gelu, a Sherpa, 10 hours and 56 minutes to reach the peak from Base Camp.
And when adventurers do venture out into the unknown today, the entire enterprise is different. Sir Edmund’s expedition occurred just a few years after the end of World War II. It was celebrated so widely in Britain - Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and the news of the conquest of Everest shared headlines - partly because it marked the conclusion of a century of imperial exploration. The Everest expeditions were begun by the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club in 1920, creating the Mount Everest Committee (later the Joint Himalayan Committee); nine expeditions had been sent to the mountain from 1920 to 1953. Sir Edmund, a native New Zealander, gave a final triumph to the era of empire and the impulse to name, map and control the untamed regions of the Earth.
The imperial explorer is now an anomaly. Much energy has been expended in recent decades showing just how closely many adventurers have been associated with the more venal aspects of the past, how claims to territory and control have turned triumph into cruelty. In contrast, a new explorer is imagined. The postmodern pioneer is not heroic, but deferential, putting little at risk, desiring safety above adventure, consideration above assertion, breaking new ground by giving the old a different shape.
This has also affected notions of risk and safety. This is most evident in the once thriving United States space program, which, unlike almost every exploratory project in world history, is intensely sensitive to loss of life and mission failure, focused on a kind of hygienic pioneering. In “The Right Stuff,” Tom Wolfe showed how early astronauts were seen by traditional test pilots not as heroes, but as capsule-enclosed, passive creatures, padded and protected and stripped of initiative.
In contemporary exploration near disasters and traumas are not an expected part of the project, the way breaking ice formations and dwindling oxygen are in Sir Edmund’s account. They are the failures, best passed over. The goal is for a safe routine, as if exploration could resemble the contemporary playground, with its rubber pads and redesigned play equipment, explicitly discouraging enterprising ventures and the testing of boundaries, eliminating all “monkey bars” and “seesaws.”
Is it that we have become spoiled by so much being easy and safe that we believe everything must be? Is this also why lovers of extreme sport seek such bizarre thrills (snowboarding down Everest!)? Otherwise “danger” is reserved for contestants on reality shows like “Survivor” and expunged from reality itself, which we believe should be subject to rational control.
Sir Edmund rejected this vision of exploration, at least as far as danger was concerned, but he embraced the postmodern model in his lifelong work on behalf of the Himalayas and its people. With consideration and care, he seemed to be trying to shape a hybrid explorer, who recognized the mystery and power of the old model along with the promise of the new, who did not believe in unnecessary danger, but who did not flinch at its presence.
On the 50th anniversary of his climb, he said that in all their years of meeting after the conquest of Everest, he and Mr. Norgay (who died in 1986) spoke of many, many things. “We talked about our families; talked about the world and its problems; talked about just about everything. But we never ever once talked about Everest.”
In that silence was a tribute to what they had done, and perhaps a recognition that in speech it would end up seeming too small a thing. Or too grand.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/books/12ever.html
January 12, 2008
An Appraisal
A Mountaineer Who Defined the Notion of Heroic Explorer
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
“I was just an enthusiastic mountaineer of modest abilities,” Sir Edmund Hillary said on the 50th anniversary of his pioneering climb of Mount Everest, “an average bloke.” Even at the moment of his greatest triumph, he claimed no more. After his descent in 1953, he wrote to his mother, “Well, I may not have produced much joy or happiness in the world but at least I’ve helped make the Hillary name a bit more famous.”
Perhaps Sir Edmund, whose death this week at the age of 88 was accompanied by praise for his courage and humanity, was actually seeing things clearly. And that may help us understand something about the very notion of a heroic explorer.
First, take Sir Edmund at his word: In what way is his triumph any more than it seems? What did a climb of Mount Everest really accomplish, at what cost, and to what end? One of his predecessors, George Leigh Mallory, said he wanted to climb Everest “because it is there!” But in service to that strange nonchalant challenge, Mallory gave his life during his attempted ascent in 1924; his body was not found until 1999.
As for Sir Edmund’s successful expedition, it was no solo venture. He and his Sherpa climbing partner, Tenzing Norgay, began with 362 porters, 20 Sherpa guides and 10,000 pounds of baggage. But in their success, no new knowledge was added to humanity’s store, nobody’s life was transformed. In the decades since their climb, Everest’s summit has even become a tourist destination. In one 1993 expedition, 40 people reached the summit in a single day, more than had succeeded during the 20 years after Sir Edmund’s ascent. One 1996 photo shows a line of climbers waiting for their chance to step up to the peak.
And while Sir Edmund may have been carving out a pioneering path, look what was left in the wake of his achievement. Expeditions have been undertaken just to remove the accumulated detritus on the slopes: hundreds of oxygen containers, tons of tents, cans, crampons and waste. The bodies of the more than 100 dead climbers have not been removed; they are too heavy to carry down.
So, heroism? But Sir Edmund’s conquest, of course, was before all of this, before advances in supplies, equipment and clothing eased the physical demands, and made death more of a novelty. His account of the ascent in his book “High Adventure” (1955, Oxford University Press) is made all the more harrowing by the matter-of-fact simplicity with which he speaks of plunging crevasses, crumbling ice shelves, nights with howling winds and dwindling oxygen. He refers to the “subtle science of snow and icecraft”; it is accompanied by a steely determination. This is no slight accomplishment - testing the limits of human experience and endurance without a safety net.
Yet he keeps the entire enterprise in perspective without pretense or pomposity. “We knocked the bastard off,” Sir Edmund is reported to have said on his return, as if he had just taken part in a sporting event. He was surprised by the ecstatic welcome he received. It is still more extraordinary that the heroic image remains intact more than 50 years later, after so much has changed.
There may be something almost nostalgic in our celebration of a “heroic explorer.” Partly this is because the world has fewer and fewer unconquered spots; those who seek glory have to create ever more ornate challenges and stunts. In 2000, a Slovenian skied down from Mount Everest’s South Summit. In 2001, a Frenchman went down the more challenging North Face on a snowboard. That same year, a blind American climbed Everest. There have also been speed competitions: In 2003, it took Lakpa Gelu, a Sherpa, 10 hours and 56 minutes to reach the peak from Base Camp.
And when adventurers do venture out into the unknown today, the entire enterprise is different. Sir Edmund’s expedition occurred just a few years after the end of World War II. It was celebrated so widely in Britain - Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and the news of the conquest of Everest shared headlines - partly because it marked the conclusion of a century of imperial exploration. The Everest expeditions were begun by the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club in 1920, creating the Mount Everest Committee (later the Joint Himalayan Committee); nine expeditions had been sent to the mountain from 1920 to 1953. Sir Edmund, a native New Zealander, gave a final triumph to the era of empire and the impulse to name, map and control the untamed regions of the Earth.
The imperial explorer is now an anomaly. Much energy has been expended in recent decades showing just how closely many adventurers have been associated with the more venal aspects of the past, how claims to territory and control have turned triumph into cruelty. In contrast, a new explorer is imagined. The postmodern pioneer is not heroic, but deferential, putting little at risk, desiring safety above adventure, consideration above assertion, breaking new ground by giving the old a different shape.
This has also affected notions of risk and safety. This is most evident in the once thriving United States space program, which, unlike almost every exploratory project in world history, is intensely sensitive to loss of life and mission failure, focused on a kind of hygienic pioneering. In “The Right Stuff,” Tom Wolfe showed how early astronauts were seen by traditional test pilots not as heroes, but as capsule-enclosed, passive creatures, padded and protected and stripped of initiative.
In contemporary exploration near disasters and traumas are not an expected part of the project, the way breaking ice formations and dwindling oxygen are in Sir Edmund’s account. They are the failures, best passed over. The goal is for a safe routine, as if exploration could resemble the contemporary playground, with its rubber pads and redesigned play equipment, explicitly discouraging enterprising ventures and the testing of boundaries, eliminating all “monkey bars” and “seesaws.”
Is it that we have become spoiled by so much being easy and safe that we believe everything must be? Is this also why lovers of extreme sport seek such bizarre thrills (snowboarding down Everest!)? Otherwise “danger” is reserved for contestants on reality shows like “Survivor” and expunged from reality itself, which we believe should be subject to rational control.
Sir Edmund rejected this vision of exploration, at least as far as danger was concerned, but he embraced the postmodern model in his lifelong work on behalf of the Himalayas and its people. With consideration and care, he seemed to be trying to shape a hybrid explorer, who recognized the mystery and power of the old model along with the promise of the new, who did not believe in unnecessary danger, but who did not flinch at its presence.
On the 50th anniversary of his climb, he said that in all their years of meeting after the conquest of Everest, he and Mr. Norgay (who died in 1986) spoke of many, many things. “We talked about our families; talked about the world and its problems; talked about just about everything. But we never ever once talked about Everest.”
In that silence was a tribute to what they had done, and perhaps a recognition that in speech it would end up seeming too small a thing. Or too grand.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/books/12ever.html