"That 'production line' mentality tends to permeate to everyone else around those people," says Aidan Loehr, an American climbing guide who has guided clients up peaks including Denali and Aconcagua (the tallest peak in South America). But that pressure to get the climb over with as quickly as possible, and push as many people to the summit as possible, also adds pressure to the "go" decision, regardless of conditions or how slow some members of the group are moving. One American climbing guide I spoke to referred to this approach as the "production line" approach to mountain climbing. Added to that is the pressure paid guides are under - especially in Europe - to get their clients up and down as quickly as possible, so they can get to the next group. So if a team has a date reserved, and the weather looks iffy or someone doesn't feel good, there's still tremendous pressure to "go," because rescheduling or delaying a trip is difficult. The crowded nature of Alpine peaks like Mont Blanc means that spots in the overnight huts along the summit route are difficult to get. The crowded slopes also mean competition for footing in narrow places, as teams attempt to pass each other, and long waits at some points for access to passageways - which means that climbers are exposed to high-altitude health risks, as well as cold and bad weather, for longer periods of time. There were, for example, 28 climbers caught by the avalanche on Mont Blanc on July 12. Aside from the environmental cost of that many humans on a mountain (an issue even at places like Mount Everest as well as Mont Blanc), so many climbers means more people are exposed to more of the risks that a high-altitude mountain presents.
For one thing, it makes the slopes of mountains like Mont Blanc crowded in the summer months, since the number of "qualified" climbers is much higher than if only those capable of scaling the peak themselves were attempting it. That doesn't mean the practice is without risks. But while guided climbs of peaks like Mount Everest may have become a far more popular (and highly paid) phenomenon in the past 20 years, relying on the skill of a guide to get recreational climbers safely up and down a mountain is the accepted norm in Europe. Worth noting, perhaps, is that four of the five "clients" perished on the descent. The first ascent of the Matterhorn, in 1865, on the Swiss-Italian border, was a guided climb. In Europe, however, using paid guides to assist climbers is a time-honored tradition. The advisability of having paid guides take climbers up challenging mountain peaks that they are unqualified to attempt themselves has been a hot topic of controversy in the climbing world ever since the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, chronicled in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, in which 8 people died. They rely on the expertise of paid climbing guides to get them up and down the mountain safely. As a result, many of the 20,000-plus people who attempt the summit each year are inexperienced or completely novice climbers. The mountain also has extremely easy access - teleferiques (gondolas) can take climbers up the first 9,000 feet or so.
But one big factor is the fact that European tour companies do portray the climb as a "long walk" that anybody who is in good physical condition can accomplish, with no previous climbing experience. In the end, there are a number of reasons. If climbing Mont Blanc is more of "a long walk" than a high-stakes, technical climb, why do so many people perish on its slopes? So clearly, there's a bit of a disconnect involved.
Indeed, many guiding companies describe Mont Blanc as more of a "long walk" than any kind of challenging climb, although it does require crampons and ice axes to summit. The odd thing about those numbers is that while Mont Blanc is the tallest mountain in Europe (approximately 15,780 feet), it is not, from a purely technical standpoint, the most difficult to climb. Some estimates put the fatality rate at an average of 100 hikers a year others that more people die each year in the Mont Blanc range than in any decade in the Alaskan mountain ranges, including the far more dangerous and challenging 20,320-foot summit of Denali (otherwise known as Mount McKinley). It has the highest fatality rate of any mountain in Europe. (Reuters)ĭespite the wide coverage it received, the news last week that 11 people had died in two separate incidents just days apart on the slopes of Mont Blanc, high in the French Alps, was probably not a surprise to anyone familiar with the mountain. Mont Blanc looming over Lake Leman, in the Swiss Alps.
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