The character of human endeavour
Recently, Polish Ski mountaineer, Andrzej Bargiel, accomplished a world first feat on Mount Everest.
He skied down from the summit to base camp with no supplemental oxygen.
Because it is something I would never do myself, I have watched numerous documentaries and “based on true events” Mount Everest movies, living vicariously through these daredevils.
Hence I understand in theory, the challenges faced by any mountaineer, let alone a skiier, to scale and return from the summit of the tallest peak in the world.
Only James Bond makes skiing down an ordinary mountain look like a stroll in the park.
I first learnt of his feat via Instagram, where a short reel was released, but I just got to watch a 31 minute abridge version of his own descent which took 2 days in total.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.
Through his journey, where I witnessed him cough and gasp for air, tumble in the snow, drop his ski pole into a crevice, cautiously make progress, these are the lessons I learnt.
#1. It takes courage to start, but pragmatism and cautiousness to successfully overcome a mountain of a challenge. You need gung ho to start, but if he had brought that with him up on the mountain, he’d sadly be one of the many lost on it.
#2. Dont just admire the results without thinking about the hard work that goes behind it. I asked chatgpt what it takes to scale Mount Everest without oxygen: This is the answer: “It requires 15–20 hours weekly of endurance, strength, and altitude training, plus years of high-mountain experience and oxygen-deprivation adaptation.”
#3. No man is an island, and you need a team to succeed. Besides the death zone (the highest parts of the mountain, where there is only 1/3rd as much oxygen as sea level, and a human can only survive for 20 hours max), the second most dangerous part of Mount Everest would be the Khumbu Icefalls, which are essentially massive crevices in the mountain that are frozen over, and which you can simply fall to your death. I really wondered how he skied through that when I first heard of his feat. As the video revealed, he had an airborne team to guide him through. It doesn’t take away from his massive individual effort to do it, but without the team, he wouldn’t have been able to do it.
You must be unflappable in the face of danger. As he was skiing down the mountain, Andrzej has only himself to rely on. He needed to have his wits about him. There was one notable moment, his ski pole dropped into a crevice. If it was me, I might have frozen in fear. But he calmed himself, and retrieved it carefully ensuring his task was not made even harder without that piece of essential gear.
It is our fragility as human beings that define our achievements. That is the true character of human endeavour. As I was enthralled by his journey down Mount Everest, a thought came to my mind, that whilst in the future, a humanoid robot would be able to achieve this feat without struggle, it is exactly the fact we have to struggle, and muddle through somehow that makes human achievement interesting and worthwhile. I guess the story there is one should always remember the grind is part of what validates the entire achievement.