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THE EVEREST CHRONICLES
#1
PROUD OF GETTING CLEAR TO THE TOP
It happened back in the year 1852, in the offices of
the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, nestled in the northern hills
of Dehra Dun. There was a computer — which in those days meant a human,
a mathematician named Radhanath Sikhdar with a sharpened pencil, who had
been working and adding up long columns of figures in the Calcutta bureau.
And this Bengali number-cruncher had just discovered the highest mountain
in the world, using triangulation numbers from six survey sites in Northern
India. Figuring in all the trigonometry, plus curvature of the earth,
atmospheric refraction, and plumb-line deflection, he reported that Peak
XV, as it was then called, was 29,002 feet above sea level, the world's
highest point.
Nine years later, the mountain was named Everest in honor of Sir George
Everest, a prior surveyor general for India. And almost immediately, adventurous
men and mountaineering enthusiasts decided that if this was the tallest
mountain on planet earth, well, then it ought to be climbed. There was
the North Pole, the South Pole . . . and now Everest was really the third
pole, the third impossible-to-reach-but-we-must-try spot on earth. Alpinist
Gunther Dyrenfurt declared that getting to the top of this highest peak
was "a matter of universal human endeavor, a cause from which there
is no withdrawal, whatever losses it may demand."
Well, "losses" has become the tragic word of emphasis ever since.
After young Mr. Sikhdar's discovery in 1852, it took another 101 years,
15 expeditions, and 24 lives lost before Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa
assistant, Tenzing Norgay finally stood at the top on May 29, 1953. Some
of you recall that headline. Hillary was knighted and became Sir Edmund
Hillary, and soon found his face on magazine covers and postage stamps
all around the world.
Here in the year 1999, the world seems fascinated still by the raw terror
of this silent monument of death there in the mysterious kingdom of Nepal.
The death toll has gone up considerably since Hillary's achievement, and
the hottest bestseller on the market right now is entitled Into Thin Air,
written by Jon Krakauer of Seattle. 3 years ago last March, on assignment
for Outside magazine, he joined a profit-making organization called Adventure
Consultants, headed by New Zealander Rob Hall. His assignment was to write
about the commercialization of Everest, the selling of guided trips —
for hackers and novices — by entrepreneurs like Hall. And as many of you
probably know, the trip ended in disaster, with a number of climbers left
up there on the roof of the world. A rogue storm blew in during the afternoon
of May 10, claiming the lives of nine climbers, including three of the
guides.
Well, what's that got to do with the spiritual focus of the Voice of Prophecy?
As we read through this chilling bestseller from Random House, it was
striking how the story of this struggle to get to the top had such incredible
power, such telling spiritual meaning. Why do people risk their lives
and their fortunes — up to $65,000 per person — in doing something like
this? There's a lesson about pride here, about motives, about greed. But
there's also heroism, a man laying down his life for his friends. Guilt.
Forgiveness. Death and resurrection. The nearness of eternity.
And in a quiet, unspoken way, maybe, there's even a sense of heaven. A
man or woman stands on the roof of this world, 29,028 feet closer to heaven
than the rest of us. He's so high up that the jet-stream wind howling
around him is caused by the spinning of the planet. He can almost reach
out and touch the stars, feel the presence of God. We'll talk about that
as well.
Author Jon Krakauer came back from Everest a different man. In some ways
it broke him; more than a year later he's still trying to forgive himself
for taking the risk, for participating in decisions that left others dead.
What can a person do with agonizing memories, with the realization of
guilt? Bodies on Everest are simply left there on the trail; he knows
that the corpse of his friend Andy Harris is still up there at the South
Summit, and that he might have saved him. Does the Bible tell us anything
that can diminish the numbing horror of culpability?
Let me say one thing here that echoes what Krakauer wrote in his conclusion.
He had tried to be respectful and sensitive in his manuscript . . . and
here for the next two weeks, we want to do the same thing. It was a horrible
thing that happened in May of 1996, and again here in July of 1999. It's
with sober hearts that we want to learn spiritual truth from a story like
this one.
Probably the four most famous words in all of mountaineering come from
the legends of Everest, and they were spoken by a British climber named
George Leigh Mallory. "Why do you want to climb this mountain?"
a U.S. news reporter asked him. And you've heard his answer: "Because
it is there." In fact, he was the driving force behind the first
three expeditions up the mountain.
But you know, it's more than that, and even we non-climbers have to admit
it. Why do we all want to climb some Everest? There are maybe good and
great reasons for some of the risks we take, the bold things we try .
. . but there's also pride. "I want to be the first man to the top."
"The oldest man to the top." "The first woman to the top."
"The first Melashenko to get there." In Rob Hall's expedition,
a 47-year-old Japanese woman named Yasuko Namba was the oldest woman to
get to the summit. Unfortunately, she died on the way down; more about
that later.
But friend, there's something in all of us that makes us want to get up
some hill . . . but only if our neighbors haven't been up it. If the day
ever comes when ten million people have been to the top of Everest — if
they someday install escalators and wind screens and maybe construct a
weather-proof see-through tube where you can hike to the top in 70-degree
comfort — then the allure will be gone. Why risk two months and sixty-five
grand and even your life to do what ten million others have done too?
By the end of 1996, something like 630 people had stood at the top, and
already some are complaining about that. Hillary himself huffed: "The
crowds of novices being escorted to the top for a fee are engendering
disrespect for the mountain." The achievement's been tarnished by
the numbers; pride can only be fulfilled if the numbers stay small, the
club exclusive.
A Seattle postal worker named Doug Hansen had gone up with Rob Hall in
1995, and eventually turned back just three hundred feet from the top.
Krakauer wrote later:
"Doug had spent the entire previous year agonizing over the fact
that he'd gotten to within three hundred feet of the summit and had to
turn around. And I mean it had gnawed at him every single day."
Now analyze something rather obvious with me. If you
want a spectacular view of the Himalayas, it's not bad at all from 28,728
feet up. You can see plenty from there . . . and you're standing higher
than a lot of your buddies at the Seattle Post Office back home. But why
isn't 28,728 feet enough? Because you've got to stand at the top. You've
got to be able to go back down and tell your friends, "I climbed
Everest." "And did you make it to the top?" "Yeah,
I made it to the top." There's something in us that makes us want
to say that.
Krakauer himself, in the introduction to his book, writes how by the time
he got to the summit himself at about 1:12 in the afternoon, May 10, he
was completely thrashed. His mind and body were starved for air; in the
past 57 hours he hadn't slept. His entire food intake for three days was
a bowl of ramen soup and a few M&Ms. And as he looked down on what
was admittedly a spectacular sight, he simply couldn't summon the energy
to care about it. Plus he knew that every minute, every second he could
spare would be needed for the often deadly trip back down. After just
five minutes on the roof of the world, he shrugged and went back down.
So it wasn't the view or the exhilaration of being at the top. It was
just to be able to get back down, collapse in a tent at Camp Four and
mutter to himself: "We've done it. We've climbed Everest." Probably
more than any other human emotion — and we can all understand it — it's
a matter of pride.
Back to British climber George Mallory, who wanted to climb Everest because
it was there . . . and also because he had a shot at being the first man
to the top. He was 38 years old, an upper-crust schoolteacher with three
children. He was a good-looking man with all the social graces; up high
on the slopes of Everest, he and his tentmates would read Hamlet to each
other.
On June 8, 1924, he and fellow climber Andrew Irvine headed for the top.
Teammates who waited below could see through a break in the clouds and
track the two men slowly and deliberately making their way toward the
summit, driven by many passions including pride. Did they make it to the
peak, to the height that counts — 29,028 feet? We'll never know, because
the two men never returned. The mountain swallowed them up that night
. . . and because no one could confirm whether they got to the top, that
record had to wait for Sir Edmund Hillary 29 years later.
Friend, if our lives are fueled by pride, if our identities are wrapped
up in "made it to the top" or "didn't make it to the top,"
then we're in trouble, aren't we? More on this tomorrow, but what a necessary
thing it is to see ourselves not as successful summiteers but as children
of God, people redeemed from this earth because of another hill called
Calvary.
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