The survival of Dawa Sherpa on Mount Everest last week will inevitably be celebrated as a miracle. It was. Yet reducing the episode to a tale of human endurance risks obscuring a more uncomfortable reality about what Everest has become in the twenty-first century. For decades, the world’s highest peak symbolised the outer limits of human exploration. Today, it is more a commercial industry. Hundreds of climbers from across the globe pay substantial sums each year to pursue a summit photograph, creating an ecosystem of expedition operators, guides, support staff and logistics providers.

At the centre of this ecosystem stand the Sherpas, whose labour, skill and local knowledge make the aspirations of others possible. The irony is that while the climbers often receive the publicity, it is the Sherpas who bear a disproportionate share of the risk. They carry equipment through dangerous icefalls, establish routes, transport oxygen cylinders and repeatedly move between camps at altitudes where the human body is steadily deteriorating. The dangers they face are not limited to avalanches and crevasses. Exhaustion,........

© The Statesman