The Inside Story Of Mount Everest's Deadliest Climbing Season | A Deadly Ascent | CNA Documentary

[Music] next tonight the growing emergency on mount everest it's been the deadliest climbing season for years and also the busiest climbing season ever [Music] the way the authorities manage everest has come under massive scrutiny and the number of people who try it just keeps growing far above the levels of even two decades ago the world has seen the photograph that's gone viral of the queue the government is blaming the weather for the number of deaths this season [Music] every single year every may there's going to be news about everest there's going to be news about death those deaths are prompting questions about whether there are too many climbers and how nepal is handling it [Music] all right interview take one and obviously if i get into something and i kind of get tongue-tied or mess it up i can just say let's just pause and then i'll give two or three second silence for the editor to get sort of i'm okay like this so lisa let's start by uh you'll always look at me yeah fine had a role to play in your journey as a mountaineer what was it like growing up here yeah do you think that is [Music] [Music] hyderabad [Music] so this is my uh my memory wall if you will the ice axe is what actually went to the summit of mount everest and this is my summit certificate with my photograph proving that i did get to the top this is given to all the climbers along with these ropes around your neck or strings that have been blessed by a local llama for permission to climb the mountain forgiveness for damaging a mountain is safety for the climbers [Music] so one of the things i've been doing when i'm not climbing a mountain is following the ever season from my home in colorado in my home office and what i do is i track around 200 sites a day which i'll check in and read two or three times a day to see what news is there also i have friends that climb the mountain i have guides that will send me information i'll receive calls in the middle of the night telling me that something disastrous has happened or someone wants to know what the weather looks like [Music] and when i first saw that picture that nims posted i believe it was on instagram it was like a kick in the gut to me i went oh my gosh this is not what mountaineering is all about this is not what mount everest is all about and i was very concerned for every single individual up there because when you're up there and you're in a line like that you're not moving and the one of the primary reasons you're not moving is like it's like being on a one-way street when i saw this this emerging situation i wrote on my blog that we have a potential disaster in development that we have this many people this short a time the end of the season the number of inexperienced climbers with unqualified guides this was the perfect storm [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign foreign foreign it is very popular to go climb everest there's a status associated with it uh even though getting the money is very difficult uh and many young people want to go climb the government encourages it and actually families encourage it and if you sum it you're a hero if you die you're a martyr so as a result we have people coming from india that perhaps don't have quite the level experience so people trying to attempt in the same day lots of big team and especially there with a lot of unindependent climber uh who are just uh not very responsible for their own uh thing lots of climber have a always a big ego that day it doesn't want to turn around and doesn't listen i think and most importantly last year we i can we can see a lot of uh unprofessional climber who climbed to who just climbed to aberrance with money i think that's that's how lots of accident happening [Music] i don't remember the exact age but i was really young right it's just a faded memory and somewhere on the tv or maybe somewhere just on the radio or something like that [Music] and i just knew everest was the highest mountain that's all i knew so we're going to my birthplace where i was born and this place is really close to my heart because i spent most of my childhood there [Music] when i was a kid this was a big goal to climb this tiny little hill this was a challenge for me then this was my childhood everest [Music] back then i was a young and free soul just like those kids because i was very obsessed with those i won't see summits but yeah i was obsessed with the peaks of the mountains because i used to look at them like okay i don't know how big it is but yeah someday at some point in my life i will find them i didn't know how to climb it how much money it takes how much efforts how deadly it is how many people lost their lives 11 kilometers completed duration 4 hours 42 minutes 32 seconds and after like few years it started turning into a goal [Music] everything was foreign running 22k every morning doing the hardest training and choosing a different career in the place i live that was the most toughest thing i have done and i found my purpose in everest at least i should go and climb it no matter how young i am [Music] i found out 2015-16 somewhere on the internet and i couldn't believe my eyes honestly i was like no this is not real like 40 000 50 thousand dollars even like more whatever it's a lot of money i told my father can you take a loan and he's like i'll try he's like no we can't but yeah i'll try i till now i still don't have an idea how he manages this when the commercialization of everest first began adventure consultants charged 65 000 and i find it interesting that up until a couple of years ago they still charge sixty five thousand dollars so basically over twenty or twenty five years but that set a a is a floor for the pricing that's when the nepali company saw the opportunity to come in and again to cut out the western guide and now they offered to climb mount everest at half the price instead of 65 000 maybe 35 000 maybe even 20 000. so that brought in a whole new demographic of climbers people that they didn't have enough money to be able to climb denali and okincagua well this was good news and bad news the good news was it brought in a whole new generation and i am all for the youth getting into the mountaineering sport that i love the bad news was they simply didn't have enough experience and we saw all this come together in 2019. now these days the problem is people paid money whatever it depends how their company charge 50 000 to 60 seventy thousand dollars if you have a really good a guy team if you pay you you will get what you pay but we have also very i would say we have very big big unhealthy competition with the agency that they run by very cheap and if you pay good of course definitely they will save you what what would be your advice for those companies who is like you know doing some some unhealthy competition i i i don't want to talk about this this very small world [Music] i'm finally in nepal kathmandu news tv new country [Music] and quite close to my goal then finally we decided to take a helicopter all the way to lukla once i was in luke i was like wow being on the world's most deadliest airport then once we landed in lukla then we started our trek all the way to base camp it's a lot of experience you're meeting new people new culture new new things and some it wasn't in my head honestly [Music] there were other factors coming in my head i'm going to be the youngest kashmiri on everest what if i don't make it to the summit what if something happens [Music] i'm coming back from camp three because the weather was so bad it's still snowing right now so i'll be attempting the next sonic window one probably might be 22nd of this month now what comes into play is the important acclimatization rotation which is really really important when i made my first rotation and when i stepped in to combo ice fall for the first time it was like scary i have never seen something big and scary in my life [Music] because most of the people might not know when to uh cross the kumbh ice fall because it's all moving eyes my body was giving up my i was getting depressed because they're like big set x of eyes big blocks of eyes as huge as the house is like two story house and you never know anything can happen anytime [Music] [Music] when i was there i thought i am going to be with a team and they would they'll support me they will help me they will encourage me because i i was the youngest on the team but it didn't happen i've been noticed as an indian climber because i renew the reputation of indian mountaineering outside the world because once you're with the outsiders asian climbers are somewhere other than an other part of the world with some foreign climbers the things really change you're being recognized as an indian who doesn't really know how to climb big mountains just being an asian climber they didn't like they kind of decided with the sherpa team that is going with a different sherpa he'll go alone he's not he can't make with us baby they're too fast right there i was supposed to be playing with the team but the day we arrived at the base camp they said you're too slow you can't climb with this because i spent most of the time on everest all alone in my tent and climbing all alone [Music] and i started to realize so many things honestly like the amount of garbage they have left there the amount of trash people leave on the mountainside plus so many other factors because people just know about the everest climbing we don't know what happens up there actually that was the moment i realized we should not expect anything from anyone it's not like the national teams where if one person summited the whole team declared victory now it's a team of individuals and every individual wants to summit for whatever their unique and personal reason is right or wrong they want to summon and they're not they're not going to give up their summit for somebody else most of the time many people consider it to be a a badge of honor that they they've climbed the highest mountain in the world they do it for their pure ego other people do it as an accomplishment which they consider to be the pinnacle of mountaineering because it's the highest mountain of the world not necessarily the hardest i don't believe that mountain climbing is about summits i don't believe mountain climbing is about records i don't believe being the first person from your city uh the first person of your nationality is all of that important obviously there's pride associated with that which everybody can appreciate but doing it for the wrong reasons is inviting the wrong consequences foreign [Music] [Music] huh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] last year there were only three days in the prime season the prime week to go summit everest normally there's five six seven eight or even like in 2018 there were 11 consecutive days so you can take five 600 people spread them out over 11 days and just like my experience in 2011 not have a problem but if you take five six seven hundred people and you try to put them into three days i promise you you're gonna have a problem and that's what we saw last year [Music] last year on both sides of the mountain there were 1137 permits issued for both members and for support the most ever it was a record in 2019 back in the 90s you might have had 50 people summited in a year maybe in 95 by 99 or 2000 maybe it grew to 150 200 people a year that included both members in other words clients who paid a permit as well as support staff and that ratio then was typically one client to maybe three quarters of of a support person so if you had 100 people summit members then maybe 75 sherpas would support them that equation has changed over the last 20 years it's now common to have 300 clients close to 400 clients or members as they're also called and then you've got cooks base camp support staff so it's not uncommon to have a thousand twelve hundred thirteen hundred people on the nepal site at base camp with that meaning 800 people that are going to be attempting to mountain both members as well as support [Music] it's like a moonwalk yeah actually so you should like look [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] um [Music] um foreign 300 people climbing on a single rope on a same day but there were already like so many people up on the mountain and another surprising fact was that some people have had left too early to make it to the summit because it was becoming it has become sort of a race summit race and they're all pushing for this summit i was like how am i going to pass all of these people because there was there was an amount of pressure coming from the back side because you're on a rope there is like so many people in front of you on the back of you they're like come on man mate push it push it i've seen people dying actually they were just trying to push themselves for the sake of something i realized no man everest is something it's turning to something else [Music] i'm like what's going on in here is this a race a death race you have a guide you have these sherpas that have summitted ten times uh you're in a line with a bunch of other people so how hard is it well i can tell you it's damn hard so now you've got this person going so slowly but they're to get to the top ambition arrogance whatever reason they're going to get to the top and the guide that they're with it doesn't have the knowledge or the skills or the desire to turn that person around because if you're a sherpa and you sum it that's a check mark on your cv and a lot of times you get a summit bonus financially for getting your client to the top so we've got pride we've got money we've got ego we've got everything involved of why you climb but you've got this person at the top that's going so slowly and nobody can pass them and the clock is ticking you're taking a breath of oxygen and you're using up that precious oxygen so now you're going along and this this this this crazy dance it's like the world's worst tango that you've got to put your rope around the other person while staying clipped in so you're never unclipped that person stands still then you clip in now you've got to take the other one and put it around and then you've got to move around that person and if you have 300 people doing this you end up with a line like what you saw finally you were able to see the sun then it came a moment which has like really really kind of broke me uh there was something going wrong with my oxygen regulator i was like i was not able to breathe i'm running out of oxygen i may need to change my slender so uh i tried to change the pressure i tried to change the knob but it was not coming in you're already in the death zone about 8 000 meters your body's already dying so my sherpa is like uh look you're young he tried to like sort of convince me that not to go up because it's going to be deadly believe me yesterday i nearly died i was like no i'm not going back and if it breaks i'm going up because i've already spent so much time training the money and it's right there in front of my eyes the summit is right in front of my eyes i'm going up and climb it but i came to a realization that no even if i make it to the summit what if i can't make it back down i had to make a decision very very like so quick i still remember like sherpa saying to me come on make a decision you can't go up you will kill yourself so i made a decision to turn around that was like something of the biggest decisions i have made in my life [Music] [Music] sunrises backgrounds [Music] foreign foreign foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] when people look at a picture like from 2019 the instant reaction is that we should reduce the number of people climbing and we should do it through reducing the number of permits issued um you know i think that the the problem will remain the same that it doesn't matter if you had if you'll say instead of having unlimited number of permits that they limited to 500 people and you still had three days of a weather window you can have the same problem in 2024 that you did in 2019 [Music] a question often asked is has commercialization really destroyed the sense of adventure or the soul of climbing and i think the answer is yes and no it certainly has become more attainable and it's also become safer statistically depauw is a different story nepal's a poor impoverished country where most of their income comes from tourism or comes from remittances by people working outside of nepal they need every single rupee that they can possibly get so they have never considered limiting the number of people that can climb mount everest that every country takes advantage of their national national resources be it oil be it fishing waters off their coast and if you're a landlocked country with no natural resources like oil or mineral like nepal does what they do have are beautiful stunning himalayan mountains including their half of mount everest so they have i think the right to commercialize the mountain to the extent that the united states commercializes uh denali in alaska that italy and france commercialized montblanc that switzerland commercializes the matahorn so i don't think it's particularly correct to criticize or pull out nepal from their commercialization that said there's a responsibility to how you manage the mountain so hi everyone i'm live again uh this live session is about everest experience so i want you all to ask yourself a question why do you want to climb the biggest mountain in the world because i believe there are more mountains in the world you can we can just look beyond our west there are so many other mountains lying there which are yet to be climbed [Music] [Music] when i do stories about everest i get the best responses because everyone else is just obsessed my message to everybody else is let's look beyond theirs [Music] when i was coming back towards camp three camp two i wasn't able to look back at the mountain [Music] i guess there's not enough kindness on the everest or maybe any other mountain because people are so much obsessed with their summit with their goal and they forget everything the humanity the kindness the love the affection everything is forgotten selfishness i saw there it was really really different okay i'm saying goodbye and i'm not coming back here i never know when i'll be back here again every summer after the season and they get criticized for something happening on the mountain then they form a committee they study the mountain whether it's trash or permits or summit certificates or crowding or fixed ropes pick your topic and then they will issue a new set of rules and they never get enforced i think the answer is to put in qualifications for the climber so that you have to have summoned an 8 000 meter mountain before you attempt everest and the guides have to be certified by international accredited organizations instead of just being someone who has a practical experience i think they also need to have a knowledge based upon education through mountaineering [Applause] here [Music] [Music] be [Music] as [Music] [Music] my you this is the actually anjali's photographs with me this is the top of the goa with anjali you can say she was with me on i miss you anjali [Music] [Music] [Music] she's still alive she died top of the world [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 547,051

Rating: 4.8044658 out of 5

Keywords: CNA, CNA Insider, People stories, Asian perspectives, A Deadly Ascent, Mount Everest, Kathmandu, Nepal, mountaineer, mountaineering, mountain climbing, tragedy, sherpa, climate change, climbing season, weather, climber, expedition, summit, mountain, Everest, trekking, climbing, Asia, Asia stories, Himalayas, Himalayan mountains, documentary, CNA documentary

Id: gOG8ufHmqIY

Length: 47min 55sec (2875 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/amber_room]

"We can either buy a new Mercedes or climb Everest. Which do you want?" "Uh... Everest please." Wth?!