I have not ever wanted to climb a mountain simply “because it’s there” although I can understand the sentiment. As a teenage Explorer Scout, I and my fellow backpackers did conquer Mt. Whitney in California’s Sierra Nevada range. I can’t even imagine cresting a mountain over twice as high. The trek was, as I remember it, pretty tough on a 14 year old’s legs. Mt. Whitney was day 5 of our 6 day expedition on the John Muir Trail between Independence and Lone Pine in the Owens Valley.
Mt. Everest has never been in the forefront of my thoughts until this year when a climber from Utah perished on the mountain. Donald Cash, a Utah software salesman had quit his job in December to devote himself to high-altitude climbing, and had reached the top of Mt. Everest. The achievement marked the completion of Cash’s Seven Summits project, and overjoyed, he performed a little victory jig at the summit. Then, without warning, he sank to his knees and toppled over. Cash’s guide raced to his side and opened wide the valve on his oxygen.
The rush of air revived Cash, and the Sherpa helped him down to the Hillary Step, a 40-foot-high rock outcropping at 28,800 feet. A group of Sherpas had been dispatched to help bring Cash down, but when they arrived, it was too late. Cash had collapsed again and never got back up. Cash’s body was left on the mountain, as his family wished.
I cannot imagine the panic and/or trauma experienced that day in the crowded summit trail that Mr. Purja captured so beautifully in the photo above. I am thinking that my 12 month combat experience in Vietnam may have come close to the extremity found on that narrow oxygen depleted ridge . . . . maybe. I am sure that Mr. Cash’s family is comforted in the knowledge that their loved one died doing what he loved. I am equally certain that no such comfort was to be had for the families of 58,000 plus of my comrades in arms who were killed fighting for numbered hills in the jungle, only to be abandoned the next day after bodies were counted.
Rusty Bent Nail 