Is it irresponsible to risk your life on a mountain for a reason nobody else can see?
Its coordinates: 3.3 Applied Ethics
Most of my clients walk the Annapurna circuit, which is hard but safe if you respect the altitude. A few each year want something else: an eight-thousander, a new route, a winter ascent. When I ask why, they rarely have an answer better than the one George Mallory is reported to have given about Everest: "Because it's there."
Their families sometimes write to me afterwards. Some say: it was his life, he chose. Others say: he had no right.
Mill wrote that over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. That seems to settle it for the climber. But a climber is never alone. Porters carry the loads, guides like me rope up with him, and when it goes wrong a helicopter crew flies into weather they would never choose.
The monk who gave me my first Buddhist book also told me the story of the blind turtle who surfaces once a century and must put its head through a yoke floating on the ocean. That, said the Buddha, is how rare a human birth is. To waste it on a summit seemed to him foolish.
So is the problem the risk itself, the risk to others, or the lack of a reason? And if the climber finds his life's meaning up there, does that count as a reason?