Everest: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Mount Everest it's no longer just a mountain it's become everyone's go-to metaphor for a significant challenge it's the Mount Everest of ice cream sundaes so the average of bar food the homie tatertot 20 minutes and yes two and a half thousand laughs this moisture tower is my Everest is it because it really shouldn't be when you host a show called man vs. food living past 50 with your original heart should be your Everest Everest was first summited in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay before then it had seemed an almost impossible feat but as you may have seen on the news recently since then climbing Everest has become dangerously popular on top of the world a deadly climbing season growing more dangerous at least 11 killed including three Americans new video this morning of that line to reach the top of the world climbers stood in freezing conditions waiting to get to the peak and allegations that some were pushing and jostling for photographs on a space roughly the size of two ping pong tables thousands of meters up holy the only thing more dangerous than jostling for photos on a mountaintop the size of two ping pong tables is just Li for photos on to actual ping pong tables eleven deaths at Delta Chi house this year nine of them sad now climbing Mount Everest has somehow gone from being a rare feat of extraordinary skill to something that looks like the line at Trader Joe's the the mountain now gets littered with trash a cleanup expedition just this year brought down over 24,000 pounds of garbage and that's not all there's also a lot of human up the mountain which thanks in part to climate change is now sliding downhill in what's been called a fecal time bomb which by the way is a phrase that really should be printed on every baby onesie because it's and it's accurate so tonight let's look at what is causing these issues however it's climbing industry operates and how we can potentially make things safer and the first thing you should know is there's actually nothing new about this overcrowding problem just look at this eerily familiar story from 2012 these are images from high up on Everest the path to the peak clogged with climbers as many as 200 gambling with their very lives yeah it turns out Everest is just as ridiculously popular today as it was seven years ago and there's just not many things that you can say that about it's basically Everest rickrolling and that's about it now there's actually a number of reasons that explain the persistence of the crowds at Everest as this Sherpa explains [Music] [Applause] you didn't see it coming and it's still fun one reason for overcrowding is that you can't actually climb to the top of Everest whenever you like there is one major summiting window which lasts about 10 days in May and in some years like this one bad weather shrinks that time down to just a few days which was fine when climbing Everest was relatively rare in fact for the first 35 years after Hilary and Norgay there were a total of just 260 ascents but the 1990s saw the advent of commercial expeditions with clients paid for mountain guides and Sherpas to help them up the mountain causing that number to explode to over 1900 by 2003 and there's now been over 9,000 successful summits and with that many people going up you might think it's hard to stand out but but some have bent over backwards to make their client unique from the oldest to get to the top to the youngest to all this nonsense if they succeed Dan and Shana will be the first Canadian couple to make it to the summit of Everest together in 2001 Stefan GATT was the first person to snowboard off the summit while husband and wife team Bertrand and Claire Roche became the first people to fly off the top in a paraglider it's 5:40 a.m. and rods reached 29,028 feet the highest point on earth but he's got one more goal to make the world's highest ever cellphone car Wow nice work wrought the highest ever cell phone call that's incredible or it would have been but unfortunately rod had AT&T so the phone call never went through if I could actually get serious for a moment there's something I've been meaning to say I know I give you a hard time business daddy but the truth is they're the only business daddy I have I know that you just want what's best for me I'm sure it's not easy having me as a business boy and I'll probably don't say this as often as I should but I love you business daddy and I hope that we never lose that special connection we have I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm so glad our connection isn't on your wireless network cause it's absolutely terrible [Applause] that's right Mount Everest the point is hundreds of people now go up every year and commercial expeditions haven't just significantly increased access to the mountain they've also increased comfort there are now luxury expeditions that can cost up to a hundred and thirty thousand dollars offering things like heated tents with dining tables and at this point we should probably talk about how all those amenities and indeed most climbers get up the mountain and that's with Sherpas the overwhelming majority of expeditions rely on Sherpas to do everything from carrying supplies to putting up tents to setting the ropes and ladders they are absolutely integral to commercial expeditions as this sharper will readily tell you how many of the clients that you see coming to Everest could do it without you I would say zero zero yeah none of them none of them he's right for many climbers Everest is not unlike Simon and Garfunkel there is someone along for the ride to the top and there's someone pulling all the weight and I'm not saying who's who and neither is Art Garfunkel and Les Paul Simon right sit for it and you've just a quick note recording Sherpas Sherpas with an uppercase s or an ethnic group Sherpas lowercase s are the mountain workers some of whom but not all are Sherpas uppercase s extra fun fact a word that changes meaning when it's capitalized is known as a capital NIM so now you have the perfect tip with handy next time you want to completely self destruct on a first date that's yours to have fun with Sherpas take on a lot of responsibility and risk for instance one of the most dangerous parts of climbing Everest involves the Khumbu Icefall a notoriously deadly area littered with gigantic blocks of ice that can fall at any moment as well as huge crevasses and if the job of some ship is known as Icefall doctors to prepare the crossing for climbers each season and for a sense of just how dangerous this job is please take your anxiety medicine of choice and watch this after four hours they're back at the crevasse it's so wide three ladders need to be lashed together the first crossing is always the most dangerous the risk is the unsecured end will collapse temper knows that the Icefall doctor he replaced died the previous year on this mountain down a crevasse and live soon wait wait don't get scared the you talking about that is very scary fear is the body's natural response then that doesn't help he's like telling someone don't get thirsty or don't be cold or don't sneeze every time you see this photo of Justin Long thank you why not if you sneezing you being weird take that down now now I do know that I cut that clip off there and you're probably worried about whether he made it to the other side so let me just show you the end of that clip because it's absolutely amazing look at that guy deeds make it across don't worry but but even after the ropes and ladders are fixed the ice ball is still incredibly dangerous for those who cross it and while paying clients may only have to pass through it a few times Sherpas have to pass through it far more often times spent in the Icefall is borrowed time because the more time you spend in it the more likely you are to be buried alive on each expedition as their clients sleep in heated tents the Sherpas have to carry the tourist gear through the Icefall not once or twice but about 40 times 40 times as baggage Porter's through this valley of death 40 times that seems like between 39 and 40 too many times and it really puts their customer's achievements in a slightly different context if your friend ran a marathon but only only because someone else ran a thousand miles back and forth bringing them Gatorade and carrying a dining table you might not cheer quite so hard at the finish line every Sherpa actually ranks among the most dangerous occupations on earth and yet many are willing to do this work because there aren't many jobs that pay as well in that region and the fact that they are risking their lives for the ambitions of well-off climbers is uncomfortable to square no matter how hard some might try just watch one TV presenter ask a Sherpa to help him grapple with the morality of what he's asking him to do if I wasn't here you wouldn't be here yeah and you wouldn't have to go through the Icefall and I know of the tragedies that have happened so I'm fascinated to know and I really I'd love to hear your honest thought whether whether you think it's wrong that we should be yeah I agree it's nice I love that description that we're family it's not client and Sherpa we're in this together but he is client and Sherpa and boy you jumped on his answer real quick there that Sherpa barely had time to get it out before you were literally hugging him and that is not the warm embrace of family that's one man physically squeezing the white guilt out of another so so huge risk our surfers to give their clients the bragging rights of conquering the ultimate mountain although it is worth knowing that purely in terms of the skills needed to make it to the top everest isn't actually the most difficult mountain to climb and don't take that from me I don't know anything Mountaineers will tell you the same Everest is you know certainly a very difficult endeavor but it's not a very technical mountain it doesn't require a lot of technical climbing skill if you can just get yourself fit enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other you can get up the thing it's true if you're going with a commercial tour you don't need much technical ability to climb Everest theoretically I could do it if I just trained a little and I know what you're thinking with that body John is there any way you could be training harder and you are right I'm a beast not a day goes by that I don't sacrifice sweat to the gods of swoll at the temple of iron and it looked elite Street yesterday I've got a mortgage from swells Fargo and I've been passing plate ever since I'll call this one papier and this one mache because my is shredded doesn't require much technical skill inexperience can still be deadly especially as you near the peak climbers on Everest can experience something called summit fever they just want to get to the top not considering whether they'll have enough energy to get back down and it can be hard to make good decisions up there the area above 26,000 feet has only 30 percent of the oxygen that there is at sea level it is called the Death Zone and what it can do to your body is brutal it's impossible to stay at these Heights for more than a few days the stomach stops digesting food the heart stops pumping blood to the fingers and toes and the brain goes into meltdown your brain is now swelling because of the hypoxia it has nowhere to go because it's constrained by your skull the only access house of your skull is where your spinal cord comes down so your brain is being squeezed out of your skull well that's delightful I'm just a little surprised those descriptions didn't just continue getting worse and worse your brain is squeezed out of your skull your nipples retract into your chest to start stabbing your heart your kneecaps continually explode reform and then explode again and the bones in your arms and the bones in your leg switch places so so ideally inexperienced climbers would not be allowed to try something so dangerous but the limits on Everest are very lacks or I should say the limits on half of Everest are very lacks because there are two major routes that all commercial expeditions follow one from the tibetan side and one from the Nepalese side the Tibet side is more technically difficult and the government there has strict limits on who and how many people can summit but the nepal side is a little easier and there are no limits on how many climbing permits the government issues you just need to pay an $11,000 fee and have a doctor's note that deems you physically fit and that's a pretty big loophole right there because even the least physically fit person on earth can get a glowing doctor's note and I know this for a fact because he recently did two-thirds of Everest climbers go up the Nepal side and a shocking number of them are unqualified to do that as a Nepalese official admits how many of the climber is that you permit to climb do you think are well qualified maybe a tonne 50:55 person 50% half yeah only half are qualified to be climbing then why on earth are you letting the other half climb if Cirque de Soleil had half its trapeze artists we trained acrobats and the other half enthusiasts with $11,000 and their own Tiger bodysuit you would shut that down before someone got badly hurt the problem is Nepal relies heavily on tourism revenue so they've been slow to make changes but they are not the only ones to blame here dieting companies could also turn down unqualified climbers and to be fair many good ones do unfortunately many bad ones do not take the case of shreya shark claw fine a Canadian woman who decided to climb Everest despite having no serious climbing experience at all sharia got an introduction to an expedition company utmost adventurer trekking it's called they told Sharia as long as she was determined enough they'd teach her what she needed to know she had to be taught almost everything from putting crampons on her boots to how to use them to cross the ice slab look agreeing to take such an obviously unqualified climber up Mount Everest could well be the Mount Everest of shitty irresponsible decisions because while incredibly that woman actually did make it to the summit she died trying to make it back down and slow inexperienced climbers aren't just a danger to themselves they can be a danger to everybody else remember the top of Everest is just two ping pong tables and the route down is sometimes single-file and if people aren't moving you can get stuck just listen to some experienced guides worry about a client who's already summited but who can't get down because of a bunch of people who probably shouldn't be there it should only take about ten minutes person at the maximum I feel really sorry for Bill and the guys up there 23 people queued up on the second step the most pathetic sight I can see is people who climb the ladder yeah and his frustration is understandable there think about the violent rage that you felt the last time you couldn't walk down an escalator because a bunch of were standing still now imagine doing that for hours in freezing temperatures as your brain leaks slowly down your spinal cord you'd be pretty angry too and look we're never going to get the number of deaths on average down to zero there is inherent risk there or at least there will be until one of the luxury expeditions offers a bespoke catapult experience in which clients are lobbed towards the summit in a private pressurized bubble but but there are steps that Nepal could take to manage the risks here like at reduce permits to prevent overcrowding space out expeditions and play strict limits on the number of companies that can operate things that other mountains do actually do but until Nepal does that that will continue to be deaths that could have been prevented and you cannot help but question the motives behind some of these climbs even Sir Edmund Hillary was depressed at what he had seen Mount Everest become and his commercial expeditions the the guides worked pretty hard getting their customers up but all the customers really want to do is to try and get to the top of the mountain and then come down and boast about it to their friends at home very few of them and I've talked to many of them very few of them have a deep feeling of love for the mountains exactly some of the people climbing Everest aren't doing out of a passion for mountaineering but just because they want to say they climbed Everest you think a selfie from the summit of Makar loo is going to get Everest levels of Instagram love of course not who gives a about Makar loo it's only the ninth tallest mountain on earth or rather it would be if it existed which it doesn't because I just made it up and have you noticed and that's the point or it would be if I had made it up in fact Macaulay was neither imaginary northern 9th tallest mountain it's the fifth tallest and that's the point or rather it would be if that were even Meccano in fact that's the view from Mount Everest and you didn't notice because the only thing most of us know about mountain climbing is that a board investment bankers selfie from the summit of Everest is fire because goals and thus deserves some serious insta-love and that is the point here but this to a possible solution too because in researching this story we stumbled upon this tantalizing attempt to secure bragging rights in Indian couples accused of faking a Mount Everest climb a photo posted to the tour company's web site claimed to show the woman at the peak of Everest but another climber has said this is a photoshopped picture of him at the summit they just photoshopped themselves up there that is the boldest use of Photoshop to trick people that I've seen since I stumbled across this seal Pony hybrid online and it's amazing and really if you are going to put yourself on top of Everest put yourself on a seal pony it's better it's just better [Applause] the more brilliant this idea becomes because if it is just a summit photo that you want faking it is probably the most ethically defensible way to get it and if even faking it seems like too much work to you don't worry that is why we've created the company Adventures indoors Lux perdition's the world leader in getting people to the summit of Everest without ever actually going there here at ail we believe that climbing Everest should be reserved for qualified climbers only but that doesn't mean that you can't visit at the top of Mount Everest simply visit the top of Mount Everest calm a website that was surprisingly available what once you are there you'll be asked would you like to climb Mount Everest simply click yes and you can then insert a picture of yourself either alone with friends or even a pet onto the top of Everest or without posing any risk to yourself or others our fatality rate is close to zero not too bad for the oldest photo shop expedition out there operational since earlier this week 2019 but we know everyone wants an arbitrary world record attached to their climb so you can also customize your photo with your personal first like this one of the first twin babies to summit Everest look at those feet all time-bombs lots of achievements so what are you waiting for blood on its hands but no one could deny its one of the most striking photos you can have of yourself so please working upon the Mount Everest of Instagram of all moments and visit the top of Mount Everest calm why do it because it's there I'm going up I'm going up I'm doing it shoot super shoot shoot I'm doing it on my own I did [Applause] targeting title [Applause] you you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 10,679,943

Keywords: everest, mount everest, john oliver mount everest, last week tonight mount everest

Id: Bchx0mS7XOY

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Bykerigan]

That scene with the Sherpa going across that rickety ass ladder is nightmare inducing.

[u/ADarkKnightRises]

John shitting on at&t might be my new favorite running gag.

[u/alexefi]

post your pictures here?

[u/MiKapo]

He didn't even mention all dead bodies on Everest like "green boots" whose dead body people pass every day while going up the mountain

[u/[deleted]]

Holy shit, many years ago I commented on Twitter how the guy from Man vs. Food is still alive after all the shit he's eaten and the dude PRIVATE MESSAGED ME to tell me it wasn't cool, and now John Oliver does the same, I wonder if he'll get an angry DM??

[u/BoogsterSU2]

LPT: Instead of going out to Nepal and face your risk of death while climbing Mount Everest that costs as much as $130,000, go to this website instead and you can slap your face onto a cutout and claim you climbed Mount Everest, ABSOLUTELY FREE!

http://TheTopOfMountEverest.com

[u/scaredofcheese]

Am I the only one that thought Rick Astley would show up at the end?

[u/PsychoSushi27]

Mirror for the non-American folk?

[u/mowdownjoe]

I'm afraid to click any links in this thread. Thanks, John.