Western Kentucky University geography professor John All, who is working in Nepal on a Fulbright scholarship to study climate change, has summited Mount Everest.
All, an avid climber of 15 years and an expert on climate change, documented his climb of the North Ridge Route on Mount Everest - the passage first attempted by ill-fated British explorer George Mallory - and shared his experience and observations with the Daily News through e-mail correspondence and a journal he kept of the experience.
All’s route - accessed through Tibet - is one of two main routes that climbers can take today to reach the summit, but it is the more dangerous by far. There is a 5 percent chance that climbers will not survive the descent, All notes in his journal.
This year about 350 people summited from the safer and more expensive Nepal route and none died. The Tibet route that All took is about a quarter of the cost. About 150 people so far this year have tried to climb it, and only about 50 succeeded, and seven died - six of those after they had summited, he said.
One person went blind, another had a heart attack and others died from the cold or from altitude-related illness. At least four of the bodies from this year are still on the mountain and will remain there indefinitely.
Many climbers choose to go with large commercial expeditions, but All chose for his partner a British climber named Ed, whose wife had been volunteering with the Himalayan Rescue Association while he climbed for a few months. The two hired a man named Anil to handle the permits and logistics and two Sherpas to help carry tents and oxygen up to the higher camps.
“This year was at least an 8 percent summit death rate,” All writes. “Be careful what you wish for …” All reached the summit May 23.
In its history, Mount Everest has killed well over 200 people - more than 120 of whom are still on the mountain, All said. “Deaths on Mt. Everest are generally not climbers, but inexperienced people who don’t have the fitness or experience for a mountain like this and unscrupulous expedition agents take their money and let them go up on the mountain,” he said. “Since the expedition teams have already been paid, they aren’t concerned if some people die - they certainly don’t mention deaths on their website. I am far more afraid of death in a Kathmandu taxi than on Mt. Everest.”
Climbing friend Brad Schneider, vice president of the developmental services division of LifeSkills Inc., describes All as “extremely driven, ambitious and competitive,” with both a doctorate in geography and a law degree. All, who had wanted to be a climber since age 10, is also a world-class adventurer who has climbed many places, from Kentucky’s Red River Gorge to Yosemite, South Africa, Thailand, and from France to Tierra Del Fuego.
“When he has a goal in mind, he’s persistent and tenacious,” Schneider said. “He’s a formidable man and he can hike and carry a load like no one I know. He’s also extremely efficient - a true minimalist, who doesn’t mind living like a Spartan for months at a time - in the mountains, and he’s very good at analyzing and minimizing risks in dangerous settings. I’m sure all of these qualities were helpful in getting him to the top of Mount Everest.”
As a child, All read accounts of people climbing Mount Everest and the Matterhorn, and was hooked. “Climbing to the highest place on earth has been a dream since then. But the more you climb and gain experience, the more you see death and injury, the more you realize just what an incredible task Mt. Everest is - it is not a coincidence that it has killed so many people,” said All, who carefully studied earlier climbs in preparation, noting how the Northern route turned back or killed climber after climber.
“Even though super-light oxygen systems and fixed ropes have dramatically simplified the climb, for me, this was still the route of legend and danger,” he said. “When I did the climb and found it to be far easier than I expected due to my intense preparations, I knew then that I had the ability to overcome this and other challenges and that is a huge confidence builder for life. If I can survive and thrive where others die, then I should be able to handle life’s general stresses or the pressure of my career.”
The climb changed All in another way, too. Seeing the careless manner in which dead bodies are treated on Mount Everest was a major shock to him.
“I have always believed in living every day to the fullest, but now that feeling has a new urgency,” he said.
He said he talked with some of the people at base camp who died during the climb.
“They had plans for new jobs and parties when they returned home. Now they will never return home. I don’t ever want to be lying on a mountain dying and regretting something I did or didn’t do. Since I have gotten off of the mountain, I have made an extra effort to tell people how much I love them and how much their support means to me,” he said.
All, who is considered an expert on climate change, is temporarily teaching at Tribhuvan University in Nepal about how to use satellite imagery to study the effect of climate change on vegetation in the Himalayas. He has spent more than 100 days backpacking through the mountains with Nepali graduate students measuring vegetation.
Because this area is so strongly affected by the Asian monsoons, any variability in vegetative growth gives an indication of variability in the Asian monsoon - which would have negative ramifications for more than 2 billion people, he said. He said what he has found flies in the face of climate warming skeptics.
“I had some friends come to visit and one of them told me how he read in the newspaper that the Himalayan glaciers aren’t really melting. I laughed in his face but didn’t say a word,” All said. “Politicians talk a lot about climate change without really understanding it and you see a lot of that in newspapers. Instead I took my friend to a vast chasm in the mountains.”
What they found was a valley more than 300 feet deep and nearly 5 miles long where 10 years ago, the entire gorge was filled with a glacier. “Now it looks like a meteor struck the earth and gouged out this massive scar. My friend was speechless as we descended into the gorge and spent several hours trying to cross it. There are tiny patches of ice buried under the rock and dozens of small ponds and lakes. Seeing is believing and my friend had a totally different view of climate change afterwards. There are thousands of these scars across Nepal and the Himalayas.”
All is making personal discoveries as well. All said he did everything possible to prepare for the climb and improve his chance of reaching the summit and returning alive. It was the extra time spent getting in super shape and planning that allowed him to survive a blizzard and some dark moments during the trip.
“Pursue your dreams with all of your might, but be prepared and do things the right way so that when your chance comes, you are ready to seize it but are also prepared to survive if mischance comes,” he said.
The following are excerpts from All’s journal:
During the first three days of the route spent ascending the East Rongbuk glacier, he writes:
It feels like you have a lead suit on your body every minute. Even getting into your sleeping bag leaves you gasping for breath like you are so close to dying. Most of the day you just lay in the tent staring at the ceiling. Small tasks to do begin to fill your mind but you just can’t move and after hours of thinking about doing something like putting on lip balm, you slap yourself and get up and do your chores on your way to eat and drink and then immediately go back to bed. I was lying in the tent reading a Newsweek where they were talking about all of the “torture” techniques that Bush allowed during his reign. Unfortunately most of them also sound like climbing here - drowning, cold exposure, lack of sleep, hunger, etc. This is a beautiful bleak place that does its best to break you every minute, every day.
May 20, 2010, 7,050 meters, -11 degrees Celsius
It was actually a perfect day - sunny but not super hot and just a few occasional wind gusts - of course they were monsters when they came and one of them froze my beard solid!
We got to the North Col around 3 or so and found that Ed’s tent had been beaten into a new shape. At least it was still here - Ed was talking to a guide and they both watched as the wind launched his tent and its contents - sleeping bag, pad, clothes, etc. - over the 2000-foot cliff.
The tent keeps getting hit by rare but incredibly strong winds. The whole tent shivers and shakes and presses onto us. I hope we don’t get blown off the ridge tomorrow!
May 21, 2010. Camp Two, 7,800 meters, -15 degrees C
The view up here towards arid Tibet and incredibly mountainous Nepal is stunning. Every step opens more of the world to our eyes. It makes every bit of pain worth it.
May 22, 2010. Camp 3, 8,300 meters, -20 degrees C
There are shattered tents all around us and we are precariously balanced on a small pile of rocks on a steep slope. After resting, we spent several hours boiling water and eating and drinking. All of the slow groups just left (between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m.). We are going to give them an hour head start to get out of the way and leave at 9:30 p.m. It is getting a bit windy and super cold (-30 Celsius).
I feel confident and strong. I hope everything goes as it should.
May 23, 2010. Camp 2, 7,800 meters, -30 degrees C
I summited Mt. Everest/Chomolungma! It still hasn’t really sunk in but I have a lifetime to contemplate it. It was an awe inspiring summit but the weight of so many dead hangs over any feeling of accomplishment beyond survival.
Anil told us that in the rush to get the torch onto the summit of Everest in time for the 2008 Olympics, 10-15 Chinese climbers died. You can’t schedule Everest and there are very few good Chinese climbers (fewer now). Even in the best conditions, climbers die. But if someone tells you to go up during a snowstorm, many climbers die. Officially no one died and they closed the Tibetan section of Everest for a big chunk of the next climbing season in 2009 and had to hire a bunch of Sherpas from Nepal to hide the bodies - which is how anyone even knows about it. They left all of the older Western bodies; which is too bad because the bodies are what ‘altered’ the experience for me so dramatically.
I should mention - climbing the summit pyramid and even on the North East Ridge - you are dying and you can feel it accelerate with every step. There is no specific organ or body part that is dying. Somehow you can feel inside yourself, every cell itself is dying. It is like you are a snowman walking into brighter and brighter sun. You don’t die all at once, but slowly disappear. The oxygen mask puts the process at bay to some extent, but you know you have such a limited time here and that you are doing your body harm that may be irreparable. All it would take would be to run out of oxygen and lay down for a few minutes, and you die. Simple, quick, and probably painless.
At around 6 a.m. Nepali time, I summited the highest mountain in the world. I wish I could say it was a beautiful summit. The views were stunning. But the summit itself is just a small high point on the ridge. Maybe one meter by three meters of high point and then it heads south down one ridge and north down the other. If you weren’t paying attention, you could walk right past it. To the west it is a cliff but not too steep for a while. To the east is the largest cliff on Earth, and the snow is undercut there and if you go within a meter of the edge of the snow, it will break off underneath you and you will fall 5000+ meters. There are no guardrails and everyone just tries to step around each other without getting too close to the edge. That cliff side is beautiful - fluted snow that looks like it has been sculpted as far down as your eye can see.

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