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Sunday Morning (26)
Lately I have been watching some YouTube video’s about mountain climbing. I don’t know why the algorithm brought me there, but it did, and I followed for a while.
I have been doing some mountain climbing in my youth, in Austria, where our family used to spend a number of summer holidays in the 1970-1980’s. Together with my father and youngest sister, and guided by a more experienced climber who stayed in the same hotel as we did, we made some great walks and ascents in the beautiful nature. Nothing to brag about in mountaineering terms though, because the highest we climbed was only 2965 meters (9725 ft), but the Scesaplana – the beautiful mountain we summitted – was the highest peak in that part of the Alps, the Rätikon mountain range, right at the border between Austria and Switzerland. And for me and my sister, only 14 years old, it felt as quite an achievement. At that age, my lungs were still reasonably okay, I recall an FEV1 of around 65%, which is enough to do these sort of things without much problems apparently.
The video’s I watched on the tube were of the more serious kind of climbing: the infamous peaks of the 8000+ group (higher than 8000 meters (26247 ft), so about 3 times higher. Everest, Lhotse, Gasherbrum, Cho Oyu, K2 – to name but a few. At those altitudes, most climbers need supplementary oxygen, although some of the most elite climbers have climbed all the 14 of these “8000+ Peaks” in the world without.
I kind of feel some affinity with these latter climbers. I imagine that breathing at those altitudes, where oxygen is only 25-30% of sea-level rates, must compare a bit with my experience of walking along the brook with 25-30% FEV1. The amount of oxygen they take in with one breath would be about the same as what I get. Granted, it must be harder up there, because there are other conditions to consider. The extreme low air pressure, altitude sickness, the freezing cold, the blazing wind, a 60 pounds backpack, and walking for hours at a time make their achievement a lot more severe. On the other hand, they have a much better physical condition than I have, more muscles, more red blood cells etc. And they don’t have to do it 365 days a year.
I must admit though that I am having a hard time figuring out why some one would risk his life climbing at those inhospitable altitudes, with or without supplementary oxygen, where the body is basically dying quite rapidly, prohibiting a stay longer than 48 hours before descending to the safer heights. Some peaks have a death rate of nearly 25% (one in four climbers that tried to summit, had to pay for this with his life). The best I can do, empathy-wise, is to imagine that in these surroundings of enormous loneliness and stillness, being completely at the mercy of mother nature, where human control and the thinking mind are so obviously falling short and time is reduced to the small gap between this step and the next, these climbers can be overcome by a strong spiritual feeling of oneness, which they fail to get anywhere else – hence almost forcing them to conquer the next mountain once back safely in base camp, when the mind comes back and the bliss fades away. Not surprising that many of them later in life find another, much safe and more permanent way to oneness through meditation.
And just an hour ago, googling, another understandable reason presented itself. In 2016, a British climber named Nick Talbot, then 39 years old, climbed the Mount Everest. Not because he wanted to become the first person with CF to do that (which he was), but to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust (about 100.000 pounds). And he wanted to find out whether it would be easier for him to summit the Everest on Kalydeco, than summiting the Cho Oyu in 2011 when this medication was not yet available for him. It was, but still at altitudes above 6000 meter his climbing pace became very slow. Yet, he made it to the top and back alive, quite some achievement indeed.
Well, I am glad I fulfilled my mountain climbing dreams already in my teens. Even on Kaftrio, I would not stand a chance doing something comparable these days. But I can climb the stairs to our apartment in one go now – every step representing one of my “14 Peaks”. Those are my mini-mountains, and I summited them three times today!
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