Overcrowding is a new danger for climbers, reports Lorna Siggins. When four Irish climbers set off from Everest's South Col for the summit with several other international expeditions last Wednesday, they were unaware of the drama on the other side of the mountain.
A British member of a commercial expedition was progressing up the North Ridge route when he was struck by a falling climber from another team.
Conan Harrod, from Manchester, was lucky not to have been killed, but he broke a leg - while the tumbling climber was reportedly unscathed. Harrod's expedition, Adventure Peaks Ltd, said he was "hopping, crawling and sliding on his bum" down the mountain on Thursday, accompanied by sherpas, as efforts were made to airlift him from base camp. One of his fellow team members was a Co Kerry woman, Patricia McGuirk, who had been making her second attempt on the mountain when she turned back earlier this week at 24,277 feet.
For Dawson Stelfox, the first Irishman to ascend Everest, 10 years ago, the Harrod incident represents all that is wrong about expeditions to the mountain, while this week's successful climb by Cork man Mick Murphy and Limerick man Ger McDonnell represents all that's right. "If you are up that high and someone falls on top of you, it means there are too many climbers on the route," Stelfox says. "It was this sort of congestion that resulted in eight climbers dying in one day on the mountain in 1996."
Like many of his fellow mountaineers, Stelfox was delighted with the Murphy/ McDonnell success on Thursday on the "Hillary/Tenzing" route from Nepal, and relieved to hear that the Northern Irish expedition was safe on the north side, though two of its climbers had to turn back only 820 feet short of the summit.
Stelfox's heart went out to Hannah Shields (38), the dentist from Kilrea, Co Derry, who had to retreat when she was overcome by exhaustion just short of the 28,710-foot South Summit. The expedition leader, Pat Falvey, also had to turn around, reportedly in trouble with his oxygen, but at least the ebullient Cork man had his day on top of the mountain in 1995.
"You have to admire the individual effort, even though this 50th anniversary year of the first climb has been acknowledged as something of a circus," Stelfox says.
Joss Lynam, father of Irish mountaineering, concurs: "Everest is not a technically difficult mountain, and it attracts that awful commercial aspect, but dealing with the altitude and the conditions requires the sort of determination and energy that is completely draining."
Mick Murphy's experience proved invaluable to the team. He was one of eight climbers on Stelfox's 1993 climb, along with Frank Nugent, Dermot Somers, Mike Barry, Robbie Fenlon, Tony Burke and Richard O'Neill-Dean. Next month, Stelfox flies with a group to Greenland to attempt some unclimbed peaks. The Belfast architect has no nostalgic twinges this week; if he had any, they were dispelled by news of the first live TV broadcast from the summit on Wednesday by a Chinese/Tibetan/Korean team. "Mountaineering is meant to be about spending time in remote regions," he says. "The sheer impact of over 400 climbers on the hill at one time detracts from the whole experience of being there. It begs the question about what mountaineering means - is it about bagging summits or about the experience in the environment?"
Breeda Murphy, Mick's sister and an experienced climber, summarises the dilemma that Everest poses. "Whatever you think about it, Everest represents a big commitment in terms of effort, money, time. When you commit, you have to commit to fail as well as to succeed - because altitude is a cruel master. And you have to know that even as an accomplished climber you can live with that very public decision."