Mount Everest: Top of Whose World?

[PJShannon]

Following is a discussion on the page titled: Mount Everest: Top of Whose World?.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!

[hallblithe]

One of the climbers mentioned comments " It's a very enlightening look at the history of the mountain and conquest. I'd forgotten about all the controversy surrounding the treatment of Mallory's body and the selling of photos by the expedition that discovered him."

[Anonymous]

 There are interesting parallels to be drawn between Himalayan climbing and rock-climbing, and both pursuits have been – like every other aspect of human existence – poisoned and debased by capitalism and its drive for profit.  Just as an almost guaranteed ascent of a big Himalayan peak has been reduced to the level of a commodity – abeit an expensive one – so too has the once anarchic and amateurish world of rock-climbing been turned into just another profit-making sideshow for the social force of capitalism… Stevie Haston – indubitably one of the greatest and most angst-ridden climbers ever – once, whilst delivering a memorable lecture on the importance of a lightweight and minimalist approach to Himalayan climbing as opposed to the capital-intensive, ego-driven siege tactics employed by the hapless dupes who got sucked into the mechanical ascents of objects of beauty in return for cash said, whilst showing a slide of a vast array of fixed ladders and ropes placed by hard-working sherpas whose sole purpose was to be be the hired slaves of a bunch of over-privileged tosspots, "This isn't climbing.  This is engineering."  He was looking pointedly at a certain member of the audience who goes by the name of Christian Bonington as he said this… I have a friend who is happy to pay ten thousand pounds to make an ascent of an obscure peak in Nepal.  More of which, later…

[jondwhite]

Very interesting JC.

[Anonymous]

 Thanks, Jon. Looking back over nearly four decades of rock-climbing and considering the ways in which things have changed has a number of different effects on me.  First of all, it makes me realise that I'm getting old! (Big five-0 next week!) Then I think about the impact on the environment that we climb in and on, and the ways in which that has changed.  It doesn't please me at all.  And an analysis of the reasons behind the all-too-obvious degradation of once wild and pristine places leads the finger inexorably and ineluctably to point at the social force of capital…Mainstream climbing these days is a fucking joke, for reasons that I'll elucidate as I continue with this narrative. Himalayan climbing has – historically – always been about the ruling class waving its knob around and boasting.  Hapless dupes have never been in short supply when capitalists have promised fame and riches in return for risking one's life in order to plant a fucking flag in some remote place or other, and that – until after the end of WW2 – was the story of mountaineering. Despite the wholly exaggerated claims of derring-do that characterise pre-war mountaineering literature, it was a period characterised by over-privileged tosspots playing at being adventurers.  It's true to say that climbing difficult lumps of rock for fun only becomes interesting when the working-class get in on the act…

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