Open letter to the Climbing community on Everest

Ten years have passed since the tragic events on Mount Everest chronicled in Into Thin Air. What have we learned? Apparently, nothing. Eleven people perished on the mountain this Spring, the most since those awful events in 1996. There are troubling details about living, but very sick, climbers being left to die high on the mountain as others climbed over them. It goes without saying that if either of those climbers had the remotest chance of being saved (as at least one did), that simple human decency requires others to assist. No summit is worth another person’s life, as Sir Edmund Hilary has so eloquently advocated.

The bigger question is, why are so many climbers getting in trouble up high? By all accounts the mountain was in better condition this season than last: the fixed lines went up earlier, the weather was significantly better, there were more summit days and a record number of total summits. I believe the answer is that more and more climbers are on the mountain who are not qualified to be there. Lots of money spent on a guide does not substitute for adequate experience, in the mountains and at altitude. It is the exception, not the rule, that expedition members are not competent to lead themselves up the mountain, nor are they competent to get themselves out of trouble.

Who benefits from this situation? Certainly incompetent climbers who wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach the summit. But it is largely, though not entirely, those climbers who make up the rescues and the deaths. So from an economist’s standpoint, the “expected value” of the ascent for all climbers on the mountain is notably lower because the probability of a negative outcome is notably higher than it would otherwise be if only qualified climbers were there. Put another way, the probability you get the chop is a lot higher (something like 1.5% this year... 1 chance in 65) and the probability you have to abort your summit attempt to help some gumby is notably higher (as several heroic climbers did this year). The real beneficiaries are the guiding companies, who are compensated well (as much as $65K per climber). Back to our economist: what we have today is a large negative externality on the mountain: the guides disproportionately reap the benefits of bringing incompetent climbers up high, at the expense, both monetary and social, of all the climbers on the mountain.

What can we do about it? Economics 101 teaches that it is possible to adjust the supply and demand dynamics of a market by imposing monetary costs on the players that are benefiting from the value of the externality. Put simply, tax the guides.

How would this work? I propose a three part program: First, require climbers to purchase rescue insurance from the respective governments (Nepal for South Side climbs, China for North Side climbs). This strategy works rather well in the European Alps. Second, use the fees to fund a group of Sherpa rangers who would “patrol” the two most popular routes (which 99% of climbers do). Today the Nepali government funds a group of Sherpa to fix and patrol the route through the Khumbu icefall. This program could be extended, at not insignificant cost, of course, to the upper mountain. Third, institute a program to fine guides for rescues of their clients by the Sherpa rangers if those clients are deemed unprepared. Surely not all rescues are the result of negligence or incompetence on the part of clients. But let’s at least make it expensive for the rescuees who are deemed at fault.

This set of programs will increase the cost of climbing the mountain, which is what one would expect in the case of an externality. And the climbing community has always simultaneously resisted outside regulation and botched internal regulation. But how long are we willing to continue to see a small group of guides benefit at the expense of the very lives of climbers? How long will we let the tragedy continue in the world’s highest place?