This Mount Everest Disaster Shows The Danger Of Clinging To Goals
Journalist and mountain climber Jon Krakauer captured this story in his breathtaking book "Into Thin Air." Krakauer didn't just uncover the story after the fact, he was on the mountain that day.
You would think that by now Everest would have become such a commercial expedition that anyone with sufficient money and a little climbing ability could make it to the summit and back. While that's largely true, it's not that unusual to hear of people dying. The 1996 disaster was different. Aside from the number of people dying on the same day, it was inexplicable.
The weather on the summit can kill you in the blink of an eye. Weather changes everything. Only the weather on this day was no different than usual. No sudden avalanches pushed a group towards death. No freak snow storms blew them away. No, their failure was entirely human.
"Into Thin Air" puts part of the blame on the stubbornness of Anatoli Boukreev, a Kazakhstani climbing guide. While there is some evidence to support this claim, most climbers are, by definition, stubborn and arrogant. Despite this, disasters of this magnitude are rare. There was something more at play.
We'll never know for sure what happened but it looks like an example of mass irrationality.
Only 720 feet from the summit, in an event that has since become known as "the traffic jam," teams from New Zealand, the United States, and Taiwan, representing 34 climbers in total, were all attempting to summit that day. Their departure point was Camp 4, at 26,000 feet. The summit was 29,000 feet. Those 3,000 feet are quite possibly one of the most dangerous spots on the planet. As such, preparation is key.
The Americans and New Zealanders co-ordinated their efforts. The last thing you want is people walking on each other impeding a smooth progression up, and if you're fortunate, down the mountain. The Taiwanese climbers, however, were not supposed to climb that day. Either reneging or misunderstanding, they proceeded on the same day.
Now the advance team also made a mistake, perhaps from confusion about the number of climbers. They failed to secure safety ropes at Hillary Step. This wouldn't have been such a big deal if there were not 34 climbers trying to reach the summit at the same time. As a result of the ropes not being laid, progression was choppy and bottlenecked.
The most important thing to keep in mind in any attempt at Everest is time. Climbers have limited oxygen. Weather can change in a heartbeat and you don't want to be on the summit at night. If you leave Camp 4 at midnight and things go your way, you might be able to reach the summit 12 hours later. But, importantly, you also have a turnaround time, which depends on weather and oxygen levels.
This is the time that no matter where you are, you're supposed to turn around and come home. If you're 200 feet from the summit and it hits your turnaround time, you have a very important choice to make. You can attempt to climb the last 200 feet or you can turn around. If you don't turn around you increase the odds of running out of oxygen and descending in some of Everest's most dangerous weather.
In this case the teams encountered a traffic jam at Hilary pass that slowed progression. They disregarded their turnaround time, which had just passed. American Ed Viesturs, watching from a telescope at Camp 4, was in disbelief. "They've already been climbing for hours, and they still aren't on the summit," he said to himself, with rising alarm. "Why haven't they turned around?"
On that day and with those oxygen supplies the last safe turnaround time was two o'clock. Members, however, continued on reaching the summit upwards of two hours past this time. Doug Hansen, a postal service worker from the New Zealand group, was the last to summit. It was just after four. While he made it to the top, the odds were against him ever coming back.
Like seven others, he died on the descent. Descents are normally difficult and prone to mistakes: you're tired, oxygen is low, and you drop your guard. In this case weather added another variable. A blizzard had come in quickly. Going down was nearly impossible. Rescue workers saved as many people as they could but the -40° temperatures, blizzard, and darkness combined to make the elements too strong.
The death toll on Everest in 1996 was the highest recored in history. And we still don't clearly understand why. Chris Kayes, a former stockbroker turned expert on organizational behaviour, has an idea though.
Kayes suspected the Everest climbers had been "lured into destruction by their passion for goals." They were too fixated on achieving their goal of successfully summiting the mountain. The closer they got to their goal, he reasons, the harder it would be to turn around. This isn't just an external goal. It's an internal one. The more we see ourselves as accomplished climbers or guides, the harder it is to turn around.
"In theology," writes Oliver Burkeman in, "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking," where a version of this Everest story appears, "the term 'theodicy' refers to the effort to maintain belief in a benevolent god, despite the prevalence of evil in the world; the phrase is occasionally used to describe the effort to maintain any belief in the face of contradictory evidence."
Borrowing from that, Chris Kayes termed goalodicy. He also wrote a book on it called "Destructive Goal Pursuit: The Mount Everest Disaster."
In the corporate world we're often focused on achieving our goals at all costs. This eventually reaches the status of dogma.
This insight is the core of an important chapter in Burkeman's book, "The Antidote":
There is an alternative, of course. Burkeman argues that "we could learn to become more comfortable with uncertainty, and to exploit the potential hidden within it, both to feel better in the present and to achieve more success in the future." (In fact, this is the strategy Henry Singleton, one of the most successful businessmen ever, pursued.)
Burkeman argues that a lot of our major life decisions are made with the goal of minimizing the "present-moment emotional discomfort." Try this "potentially mortifying" exercise in self-examination:
Goals Gone Wild
The General Motors Example
When we reach our goals but fail to achieve the intended results, we usually chalk this up to having the wrong goals. While it's true that some goals are better than others, how could it be otherwise? But the "more profound hazard here affects virtually any form of future planning."
Turning Towards Uncertainty
What would it look like to embrace uncertainty?
For this Burkeman turns to Saras Sarasvathy, who interviewed forty-five "successful" entrepreneurs. Saravathy's findings are surprising. She found a disconnect between our thoughts on entrepreneurs as successfully pursuing a goal-oriented approach and reality.
The most valuable skill of a successful entrepreneur, "isn't vision or passion or a steadfast insistence on destroying every barrier between yourself and some prize."
Underpinning Sarasvathy's "anti-goal" approach is a set of principles she calls "effectuation."
Burkeman concludes:
"The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking" is a counter-balance to our modern belief that being happy is only an effort away.
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