The Deadliest Place on Earth

Disclaimer: this post is a bit longer than usual, but I hope you'll agree with me it's worth it. It tells a story of bravery and folly. So if you want to embark on this journey (from 5 to 7 minutes long) among the Himalayan peaks, we can start with a game.

It's called Seven Eleven.

Take two dice and roll them. You need to score between 7 and 11.

Did you make it?

Congrats!!!

You are still alive.

Don't worry, this is not a horror story and no-one is right behind you with a knife and a Scream mask ready to stab you if you hit a 12 or you got less than 7. At least I hope.

Still, you should be concerned about this statistic if you were about to climb the peak in the background of this picture: Annapurna I, the deadliest mountain in the World.

Yes, because chances of getting between 7 and 11 by rolling two dice are exactly 55.56%, which is a bit less than the success ratio in Annapurna expeditions up to 2009: 56.87%.

Whoever climbed that mountain (the 10th tallest in the world with a height of 8091 meters) since the first attempt in 1950, never had statistically more than 56% chance of coming back alive. 153 attempts, 58 death climbing, 8 deaths on descents. All of them trained climbers, not more nor less than those who attempted before them.

What makes people, with all the mountains available in the world, to choose the deadliest? What makes someone embark in an adventure where your life is at stake of slightly more than a coin flip?

Well, there can be many reasons and I let you discuss them over a beer with your friends tonight. Just to reassure you, for how crazy the high altitude climbers can be, they are not so much to proactively seek danger. Besides being the deadliest, Annapurna I is also the least attempted of the 14 peaks over 8,000 meters.

The vast majority of the people prefer climbing something much easier like, let's say, Everest. A stroll in the woods compared to Annapurna, with over 3600 attempts (more than 20 times Annapurna) and a death toll of "just" 7%.

Ironically, the surroundings of Annapurna are instead very crowded, hosting probably the most famous high altitude trek for "normal people" in the world: the Annapurna circuit.

Thousands of trekkers walk the Circuit around the mountain range every year and often add a short appendix entering the core of the Annapurna Sanctuary to reach the Base Camp.

I did the same and I had the opportunity to take this picture in an iconic moment. The moment when this awful statistic, this 43,13% of casualties on the way up and down Annapurna I, got significantly lower. Because on the first days of May 2016, a team of 16 sherpa and 14 foreign climbers survived the mountain. Not everyone made it to the top, but nobody died. Checkmate, Annapurna!

I like this picture because there are three stages of the Man vs Mountain fight. We already spoke about the Peak on the background. Then there is a second layer: more or less in the centre of the picture, you can see two tripods. They are there to film and record the attempt of a solo climber. Because while the thirty I mentioned before did it the "easy way", from the north face, there was a crazy man climbing from the south wall, where the avalanche risk is higher.

The name of the man was Nobukazu Kuriki, an institution of climbing: he conquered six of the 7 summits, the tallest mountains of the seven continents. For him, 56% of success was not enough, he wanted to try the hardest way, find a new path and give it his name. The pictures taken by those very two tripods can be found online, on this page from 2016.

Kuriki had to wait for weeks for the right window in the hostile Himalayan weather. Conquering an 8,000 is an exercise of skills and patience: he reached the Basecamp 20 days before, did some acclimatization, tried 3 progressive climbs until the 5,500 mark to check the lines and train his body, and then in the first days of May, attempted the climb.

This picture was taken on May 2nd, while he was doing his third check. Two days later, he went all-in, but failed the mission and had to give up around the 6,500 mark.

Kuriki survived Annapurna but died last May on the Everest, his cursed mountain, the only peak he missed from the 7 summits. He attempted it 8 times, lost 9 fingers on the 2012 climb and eventually died in his sleep at the base camp a few months ago, after posting on Facebook that he didn't feel too well.

Then there is the third and final layer, the first thing you see in the picture, a memorial stone. It remembers two Kazakhstani climbers and the second is very famous. He had the exact opposite destiny of Kuriki. Survived and conquered many times the Everest, died on the Annapurna on Christmas day during a winter climb, in 1997.

Anatoli Boukreev was a hero and there is a movie to witness it. It all goes back to the deadliest day on the Everest, the one that went down to history as the "1996 Everest Disaster". Three different groups plus some solo climbers got stuck in the traffic trying to reach the peak in the last window possible in May, they were caught by a storm and 8 of them died including the two most famous team leaders of the time: Rob Hall and Scott Fischer.

On the Hall team was the famous journalist Jon Krakauer, who survived the experience and gained fame after the book he wrote, "Into thin air". He then went to write the even more successful "Into the Wild".

The account from Krakauer was deemed incorrect by Boukreev, who quickly wrote his personal report of the whole incident and in 1997, a few months before his death, published "The Climb".

And finally, there is a third book by one of the miracle survivors of the expedition, Beck Weathers. In the book, called "Left for Dead", Weathers rebuts Krakauer's account and confirms that Boukreev was the real hero of the expedition, saving many lives and going up and down the mountain in the search for survivors.

Weathers' book became a Movie, "Everest (2015)", which became a huge success. It's an amazing film and you should watch it. It only contains one big mistake, the tagline: "Everest is the most dangerous place on Earth". Now you know it's not.

You can watch the trailer here:

So here we are, at the end of the journey. There is one last thing I'd like to tell. Not far from where I took this picture there is another memorial for Boukreev alone. On the plate, his most famous statement, the one that answers the question we had at the beginning: why people climb such a dangerous mountain. He said:

"Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion"

Here following, you find some other picture of the Annapurna I and surroundings, in memory of all the people who lost their life on this mountain.