Aspen ski mountaineer Mike Marolt turned around only 500 feet below the summit of Mount Everest last month after deciding it wasn’t worth his life. He certainly had ample actuarial data to make that risk-benefit analysis.
Six people died in a five-day period while Marolt, twin brother Steve and longtime friend Jim Gile were on the mountain. All accomplished ski mountaineers, they went hoping to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen and ski from its 29,035-foot summit, having skied Cho Oyu, another 8,000-meter Himalayan peak two weeks earlier.
Everest was different.
“To get that high without (oxygen) was plenty for me,” Marolt said after returning to Aspen last week. “That’s a little hairy, a lot hairier than I expected. It’s one thing to do an 8,000-meter (26,247 feet) peak, but Everest has that next level from 27 up to 29; you’ve got to live in that for two days. You don’t just go and touch it and turn around. It beat the heck out of me.”
About 850 people climbed Everest this spring. They included Breckenridge guide Bill Crouse, who notched his seventh Everest summit, and Denver schoolteacher Mike Haugen. The vast majority use bottled oxygen.
The Marolt team went without it. Marolt said climbing wasn’t so hard, because it keeps the circulation going, but resting in a tent makes the body deteriorate rapidly.
“It’s like once you get your lawnmower going, it will keep going,” Marolt said. “It’s when it’s stopped you’ve got to worry. Hanging out in a tent at those altitudes is a little frightful.
“When you look at the science behind it, you build up lactic acid and bicarbonate when you don’t keep your circulation going. That stuff builds up and you get high-altitude paralysis. That stuff gets in your muscles for a reason, so your body doesn’t injure itself by continuing to work hard when your body doesn’t want to – and when you shouldn’t. If you can keep a little circulation going, enough to flush that stuff out, you feel fine. But when you sit down, you start building that stuff up.”
Still, Marolt and Gile made it to 28,500 feet on May 21 before deciding to turn back. His feet desperately cold, Marolt asked himself four questions he always considers at crucial moments on a climb:
Is there anything you absolutely can’t feel because it’s numb? His toes were cold, but he could still feel them.
Do you think you can get down right now? The answer was yes.
Can you get to the summit? There was no question about that.
“But the fourth question I always ask myself, ‘Do you think if you get to the summit, you’ll be able to get down?’ I just couldn’t answer yes to that. I had to turn around. … I just said, ‘I can’t lose my toes over this, (and) my girls need a dad.”‘
Marolt and Co. downclimbed and then skied from approximately 26,000 feet. In 2003 they skied from just above 25,000 feet on Everest. In 2000 the Marolts were the first Americans to ski an 8,000-meter peak, Shishipangma.
Now Marolt says he is done with Everest.
“Everest is out of my system,” Marolt said. “On Everest you have to camp twice (above 8,000 meters), and it’s just too dangerous. You feel like the Grim Reaper is right there on your shoulder. You just know you’re dying up there. It’s scary.
“I didn’t know it would be that extreme, but knowing now what it’s like up there, I can’t responsibly go back. My kids and my feet are worth more than the thrill. It was thrilling, I’m glad I did it, but been there, done that.”
