Dark Shadows Falling

Joe Simpson

Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1997. ISBN: 0-89886-549-2. Pp. 208, color photos.

I recently read Mr Simpson's first book, Touching the Void, a damn fine piece of writing about his ordeal in the Peruvian Andes. Having heard universal accolades about his talent as a writer, I took the plunge and bought another one of his (many, at this point) books --- this one. Whereas it was not a major disappointment, it was a rather significant letdown. The book is basically pointless, unless one thinks that bewailing the sorry state of mountaineering today is something many care about, or unless one takes seriously fluff like "you don't conquer a mountain, the mountain lets you climb it" (not a real quote but a close paraphrase of the sentiment), or unless one thinks that talking about something that poses an interesting ethical and moral dilemma is the same as having something deep to say about it. This book is Mr Simpson's soapbox. Or rather, it is his pulpit erected on a platform of soapboxes the size of a respectable Himalayan chorten. And he means to bully us from it.

The book starts off on an extremely promising note as Mr Simpson recounts a pretty disturbing event that took place on the South Col of Everest in May 1992. An Indian climber got stranded on his way back and collapsed on the col, meters away from the tents in which Ronald Naar's Dutch expedition camped. He fell and slowly froze to death but not without faintly crying for help. The people in the tent heard him, looked out, saw him, and... did nothing. They did not make an attempt to check if he was beyond help, let alone tried to rescue him. They did not even offer him the consolation of dying in human hands. Why? This is what Mr Simpson wants to know.

Unfortunately, this is precisely the question he fails to answer. I am not sure if this is really his fault: this is a terribly difficult question to ponder. The first reaction is perhaps the natural one: how can they do this and call themselves human? Why wouldn't someone offer assistance while there is the glimmer of hope? Then you transport yourself mentally 7 kilometers in the air, and find yourself huddling in a tent in the Death Zone. You are suffering from the effects of altitude, your body is slowly consuming itself, you have sacrificed so much just to get here. Your experience tells you that there is little, if anything, you can do, that you will certainly end your expedition's summit bid if you try, and that you may well endanger the lives of your team-members in the process. But is this an explanation or a rationalization of a dastardly act? Is it convincing to mollify your conscience by repeating like mantra something along the following line: "He knew what he was getting into when he got on Everest. He knew the risks, everybody does, and he accepted them. He should not expect others to sacrifice themselves because he failed. He chose to be here, and it's really his fault that he did not make it." Or does our obligation to fellow humans in trouble transcend fault? Is responsibility for others a moral imperative? If it is, is it moral to purposely endanger oneself by indulging in extreme mountaineering for personal glorification, especially when you know that you may compel others to abort their plans to save you?

I certainly do not have an answer to any of this. I would like to believe that I would do the right thing if I find myself in a situation like that but I find myself wishing never to be tested. Mr Simpson, however, brings in several examples to buttress his perspective. Rescuing, and if that is impossible, then comforting, a fellow human being takes precedence over just about everything else, but certainly over one's own ambitions. For him, Naar's "explanation" is nothing more than rationalized cowardice, perhaps tinged with racism: Mr Simpson dismisses the idea that the Dutchman could have known that the Indian was beyond help and then suggests that Naar would not have been that sanguine if the dying man was from his own country. Mr Simpson's evidence for the first assertion is his own rather dramatic survival story and, perhaps just as famously, Mr Beck Weathers' return from the land of the dead in that ill-fated 1996 Everest expedition. [I should note that Mr Simpson's account is cursory and not nearly as interesting as those of the eye-witnesses.] But two cases do not a trend make. In fact, they are so memorable precisely because they are exceptional, because they are out of the ordinary, because they contradict the statistics. And the statistics of survival at that altitude after extensive exposure are rather grim, and Mr Simpson's own accounting of the dismal figures can testify. As for the second assertion, I do not know either. I have heard of people making sacrifices for friends while they would not have made them for others. This does not make them racists although it does put an interest twist to the puzzle of a human life's worth. Apparently, people can and do evaluate lives differently. I don't know that this is wrong.

Mr Simpson then abandons the interesting questions and launches into a diatribe against mass tourism to the mountains and commercial climbing, followed by an odd defense of the financial soundness of rescue operations (I guess that's something one would know about if he were a British climber), then a rant about how insensitive Western trekkers are apt to abandon their local staff in danger, all suffused with indignation and spiced up with some self-effacing comments to make it look respectable. I don't know what to make of it: are these things all connected, as Mr Simpson seems to imply? Are they caused by some precipitous decline in mountaineering ethics as the sport has become contaminated by the presence of various amateurs with enough money to afford guides? I don't buy it: my own reading of mountaineering history is that it has always been made by men and women who do have a certain disregard for human life (or else they would not be doing what they are doing). It bears noting and emphasizing that a lot, if not most, of the tragedies involve experienced climbers, not rank amateurs who probably tend to be on the safe side simply because they are not that good at the sport. It is arrogance that causes most misfortune, and arrogance comes from experience, not from the lack of it.

Throughout, some rather ludicrous suggestions for "solutions" pop up. Like closing some of the mountains to people altogether (140-1). It is not clear if Mr Simpson agrees with that completely but he is certainly sympathetic. He is ambivalent because closing the mountain so it's not "abused for profit and ego" would put an end to most mountaineering, which is nothing if not massage of one's ego. Yeah, I have heard a lot about how people climb to discover themselves or something, but I don't think I'm lost enough right now to have to discover myself dangling from a flimsy rope thousands of feet in the air. Or take the amusingly vacuous discussion of elitism with the proscription of guiding (126-30). This would appear to be a solution to their "dilemma" of mountains supposedly being full of people who should not be there. I was reading this and could not help thinking, "Guys, get real. Who cares about your distinctions?" Apart from your own small clique, that is. People will go to the mountains and will climb them in every way imaginable. People may be driven by the same impulse but will value it differently. For a "real" mountaineer conquering Everest may not be that big because the peak is reportedly easy from a technical point of view. But for many this point of view is meaningless, and summitting is an achievement even if it is guided, with oxygen, and with Sherpa.

To round off the package, Mr Simpson serves an especially puzzling account of an unsuccessful attempt to chart a new route on Pumori. It's not exactly clear what he was trying to do with these chapters except remind of of the dangers of avalanches, and pontificate some more on the oddness of climbing mountains with total disregard to fellow humans or just for the sake of "bagging" yet another high peak. We return again to his philosophy that "the only honest way is to [climb] in the purest style" (204). Despite his protestation that his choice "does not give [him] the right to enforce that view on others," I beg to differ, the whole book is one blatant attempt at enforcement, complete with an emotional appeal derived from his experience: how after struggling for three days, he collapsed and just when he had given up, human arms dragged him from the falling shadows and into the light. I completely empathize with Mr Simpson and perhaps he knows much about these experiences that I do not, it just that I am not persuaded by his arguments. I am willing to be corrected though.

October 10, 2005