Dragged to the Summit

When Responsibility Is Outsourced and Achievement Is Purchased

I’ve just finished reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. You might remember, in 2015 there was a film adaptation based on this 1996 Mount Everest disaster in which eight climbers died. Jon Krakauer, a journalist, was part of the climbing teams to witness it. The book stirred something in me: my love for mountains, being an athlete and the commercialisation (erosion?) of sport.

There is also the current political, economic and educational attrition developing in the West that reminds of the place that I ran away from. Communism made us extremely lazy, mostly because for 50 years there was no way to fight the Big Brother. Apathy, indifference, and “what’s the point” attitude. It was unnerving for a fiery Aries like me. I had to run away from this. I had ambitions! I had hard work ahead! I was a revolutionary! Now, however, 25 years later, the history seems to be coming full circle.

Is capitalism making us lazy? On one hand you have the incentive to perform well as, as opposed to communism, there are opportunities, but…

If it comes to sport, when converted into business, where students are no longer students, but ‘clients’, and mentors turn into people pleasing marketing sell-outs, who does this system really benefit?

The parallels between coaching Olympic Weightlifting, teaching Yoga and the ‘guiding’ industry pushing non-athletes up Everest are spot on. The only difference is that apart from a few accidents, people do not usually die doing Eka Pada Sirsasana (leg behind head), well – you might get a few hip replacements later down the line but who cares, a surgeon will ‘sort it’.

The problem is that people really do die in the mountains. In 2019 we had a mass casualty event on Mount Giewont (the Tatras), and it stands at the mere height of 1,894 meters above sea level. 4 people died and 157 were injured. Why? Because when the weather started to shift, the tourists decided to face thunder on the mountain top instead of choosing to turn around as soon as the first black clouds appeared on the horizon.

I’ve been to the Tatras almost a dozen of times, and climbed other European mountains as well, and I know how hard it is to turn around when you’re extremely close to the top. In fact, Krakauer quotes Rob Hall, the leader of Adventure Consultants, talking about another young mounting climber: “To turn around that close to the summit… that showed incredibly good judgment on the young Göran’s part. […] With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill [Everest]. The trick is to get down alive.”

How bloody ironic as at the end of this tragic trip he led, he was the one who didn’t make that good judgment call. But, as Krakauer writes, to judge Rob, without understanding the complexity of what it takes to climb these mountains, would be reductive. Mountains always have the last word and sometimes no matter how much ‘good judgment’ one puts forward, one doesn’t always end up alive. That applies to both: professional mountaineers and commercial clients.

One of the main themes of the book is the famous dispute that played out between Anatoli Boukreev (a guide on Mountain Madness team) and Rob Hall (Adventure Consultants).

Anatoli - a legendary high-altitude mountaineer, believed that paying clients should possess the requisite skills to climb independently. He strongly disagreed with the commercial philosophy of artificially "dragging" novices up the mountain, as he felt it stripped the sport of its integrity and created dangerous, false dependencies on guides in the "Death Zone."

Anatoli Boukreev

I could not agree more. And I don’t think it all has to do with the fact that we both were born and bred under the iron fist of communism. Nobody had any money however sport (and education) was free. There was no such thing as paying and doing whatever you want ‘because you pay’. When I was learning horse riding, I spent 5 months bumping my ass on some ‘mules’ back before I was upgraded to a ‘mustang’ and allowed to go for a country ‘walk’.

In the West you pay, they strap you to a horse and off you go. It’s so dangerous. And stupid. Are those ‘clients’ not afraid to fall and break their neck? I guess not because somehow money (they pay) insulates them from accidents.

John Cleese’s quote comes to mind: To know that you are stupid at something, you need the exact same skills you would need in order to master it.

That’s the problem with sport being turned into business. When you are a paying client, it turns you into a passive object. Thinking is not required. Unreasonable demands and expectations are.

Being a client strips you of your empowerment by being passive and entitled. When you are a client, you expect certainty.

On the other hand, when you are an athlete, you know that only uncertainty is certain. When you are an athlete, the emphasis is on self-reliance and the ability to make critical decisions. You are forced into taking personal responsibly and dealing with the consequences for the outcomes of your actions.

As a ‘client’ you let go of any accountability, you let go of the status of an adult and become a little baby that needs a babysitter.

You know, I really feel that some of the clients that died that day on Everest would have survived if they didn’t wait for someone to do something for them ‘because they had paid’.

Unfortunately, a client’s entitlement usually turns one into victimhood when one’s cries (of a baby that forked out so much and the golden spoon is still not available) are not heard. If being a victim doesn’t work, we then turn into a bully that sues or badmouths the ‘bad parent’ (coach / guide / teacher).

For coaches / guides, the consequences of this system are equally disastrous. To be able to attract clients we often need to lie (otherwise known as “marketing”) and overpromise the certainty of success without effort. Tips, tricks, hacks are demonstrated. Half-truths told. The promise of glory sold. People pleasing. Ego teasing.

Rob Hall himself “had bragged on more than one occasion that he could get almost any reasonably fit person to the summit.”

I don’t want to judge him as I think capitalism often places us in impossible situations, but if he hadn’t overpromised to deliver, he might have lived today.

So, on one hand I’m pleased having been born into communism where no amount of money (that nobody had anyway) could buy you success. But that also makes me a bad coach as I refuse to sell. Because to sell you must make something attractive. You must make something desirable. And I can’t do that. You either love something or you don’t’. Most of us in poor countries did sport because we loved it. We climbed mountains because we loved mountains. And maybe that’s why I turned around before reaching many peaks prior to being reduced to a piece of toast by a storm and its lightning.

Nowadays, a lot of people don’t climb mountains because they hear the call, they climb so that they can feel just a little bit less unworthy by ‘doing something extraordinary’. When Jon Krakauer asked the team members (paying clients) at Base Camp, why they want to climb Everest, nobody could give him a reasonable answer. None of them said because they love the mountains (if you do then surely you can choose something less dangerous to climb). One woman said (roughly to that accord) that she didn’t want to be perceived as ‘just a housewife’… Oh the lack of self-worth.

The lack of self-worth is also visibly clear on the side of the coaches. If you have the courage to say the truth, ‘Look mate, Olympic Weightlifting is hard and with your lack of mobility you’re going to suck at it for some time’… instead we cajole people into six-week programmes that’s going to ‘fix everything’.

I can’t.

I especially can’t as most people don’t even love the sport but use it to feel a little bit better about themselves. No, I’m not talking about the physical and mental (cognitive) benefits. I’m talking about doing it for the glory of showing off. Of the constant need for PBs and improvement and the frustration of one unsuccessful training session.

But the worst people pleasing I see is in PT clients. A lot of them do not love exercising, they do it because… I personally have no clue. Probably because they want to be more lovable if thinner. They book the session, often don’t come or cancel (with the most ludicrous excuse) and later they treat you with passive aggressiveness by both behaving sheepish and angry at you for having to apologise for not turning up to something they never wanted to do in the first place.

Sweet Baby Jesus, take me to heaven now.