I recently came across your Everest.Lives podcast. I was intrigued because of your long history in Nepal and your informative articles about Everest in Outside Magazine, which I’ve read and enjoyed.
Having climbed 7000M and 8000M peaks in the Himalaya, having been to Everest base camp, and currently preparing to climb Mount Everest this spring, I was looking forward to Episode 1 of your podcast. Unfortunately, I found much misleading (if not false) information in it. This was particularly disappointing in light of the current cynical public attitude towards Everest due to the generally negative coverage in the media. As you put it “people love to hate Everest,” and you’ve given them fodder.
This not an exhaustive list, but here are some of the things that raised concerns for me. They all concern your overall theme that anyone can climb Everest without any training or experience.
* You suggested, or at least implied, that no experience is required to climb Everest as long as you have the money. “Almost anyone can buy a trip up Mt. Everest,” you said. You suggested that for $70,000 Garrett Madison would take a “reasonably fit” person who has no climbing experience other than “climbing Mt. Mansfield in Vermont” up Everest. I’ve climbed with Garrett. He is a legend in the mountaineering community with a strong safety record. He would not accept a client for Everest who had that hugely inadequate climbing resume.
* You also talked about “this YouTuber that climbed [Everest] and did a backflip”, demonstrating that “someone can do that with no experience.” That someone is Devon Levesque. Clearly, you had no idea what his experience was when you said that. According to one of his recent posts: “Prior to summiting Everest, I’m very glad I climbed multiple 7000 meter peaks, did a ton of crevasse training, high altitude training and overall got my body in shape.” He trained for three years, including completing climbs on Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, and Vinson in Antarctica. He’d done many other endurance events as well. (The guy bear crawled the New York City marathon for crying out loud!) Bad example for you to use of someone with “no experience.” You should know this - you contributed to an article about him in Outside.
* You diminished the level of effort and training required to climb Everest by suggesting that people get flown in a helicopter to the summit, or at least to the higher camps. A climber being flown the summit? That’s never been done - never. And even your comments about getting flown to the higher camps and climbing from there - a head start, like taking “the cable car up the the Aiguille du Midi” to climb Mont Blanc - were very misleading. You picked up on Billi’s comment about people being flown DOWN from Camp 2. That happens, usually in emergencies, but you should triple check your facts before suggesting a bunch of people are being flown up to Camps 2 and 3 and starting their climb there. Generally, the helicopter pilots fly to Camp 2 (and very rarely Camp 3) only for rescues to take injured or sick climbers DOWN, not up.
* Your guest, Billi, suggested that climbing Everest was like doing a via ferrata in Europe and that an 8 year old child can do it. Yes, there are ropes on Everest, and even some ladders, but to suggest that summiting Everest requires only the effort of a small child doing a European via ferrata is absurd.
* Finally, you left the impression that climbing Everest is full of luxury and comfort, because, for instance, you can get an espresso at base camp. Again, misleading. Everest is two months of winter camping. Everyone sleeps in tents. You sleep in a -40 degree sleeping bag. You don’t shower. You might not change your underwear for weeks. Yes, you can get coffee, even with steamed milk, but if that’s defines luxury, everyone who has access to a corner coffee shop is living a life of luxury. I think the vast majority of people would disagree with your definition.
All of this was unfortunate at best. At worst, it was irresponsible for someone with your background to feed the negativity about Everest with false and misleading information. Please let me know if I got something wrong or, if not, consider taking the opportunity to correct some of the misleading impressions left by episode one.
By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed the next two episodes and thought Lukas did a nice job providing some more context about what happens on Everest and who the climbers are.
