Prelude: Mountains in an Uncertain World* - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 9

Our near-total lack of hydro-climatological information from vast
glacierized regions such as the Himalaya and Andes needs to be corrected so
that real evaluations can be made from a reliable database (Alford 2011). The
countries concerned and the relevant international agencies are beginning
to move ahead to fi ll this need. 3 The fi rst tasks, however, must be to reduce
the burden of confl ict and to facilitate the involvement of mountain people
in the management of their local resources and in development of relations
with society at large. The ongoing problems of poverty and warfare are
so formidable that they cannot be solved in the short term. But we must
pursue them relentlessly; we must have hope .
It is perhaps appropriate at this point to revert to the latter-day evolution
of mountaineering. This can be encompassed by reference to a single,
regrettable tragedy.
On May 19, 2012, Shriya Shah-Klorfi ne died descending from the
summit of Mount Everest where she had just planted the Maple Leaf of
Canada, her adoptive homeland. Three other climbers died that day on the
South Col route among the estimated 150 who mobbed a slender ropeway.
The traffi c jam at the Hillary Step is itself a huge risk factor, exhausting
precious oxygen supplies, over-exposing climbers in the Death Zone above
8,000 metres, and delaying ascents until it is too late to descend safely.
Shah-Klorfi ne's calamity was instantly spread by the news media across the
length and breadth of Canada and is by now a familiar story comparable
to many others; and yet, when it comes to life-threatening developments
on Mount Everest, human bottlenecks at the Hillary Step, are just the tip
of the iceberg.
People get sucked into the Everest vortex in diverse ways. I fi rst
experienced the tug of the Himalayan massif in the spring of 1953; I was
an undergraduate, preparing to lead Nottingham University's fi rst Arctic
glacier research expedition while anxiously following the progress of
the British Mount Everest expedition. The brilliant success of John Hunt,
expedition leader, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, perfectly timed
to embellish the coronation of our new Queen Elizabeth heightened our
resolve to persevere toward our own comparatively humble objectives.
Per aspera ad astra!
The following autumn, I was invited to the triumphant Everest lecture
at the Royal Albert Hall. There I was introduced to John Hunt (to become
Lord Hunt of Llanfair Waterdine), Ed Hillary, and a cohort of Everest
pioneers, including Noel Odell and Tom Longstaff. The dream of Everest
and its heroes stayed with me until I eventually set eyes on The Mountain
in 1979. By then, however, the Everest lustre was wearing thin.
After emigrating to Canada in 1954, I embarked on 12 years of research
in the eastern Canadian Arctic and Subarctic, still an exotic destination
for hard-core mountain and tundra afi cionados. Later, as co-ordinator of