Posted on 01/14/2018 9:01:42 AM PST by nickcarraway
Last August, after several accidents and deaths among climbers on Mont Blanc, Western Europe’s highest and most treacherous mountain, Jean-Marc Peillex, the mayor of the French town of St. Gervais-les-Bains, issued an order: Anyone attempting to climb the nearby Gouter route up the mountain must now have specified gear including a harness, rope and headlamp. Those who do not take these precautions are to be fined.
On the face of it, the order is common sense. Mont Blanc, known among climbers as the White Killer, is 15,774 feet high, and as the recent spate of casualties make clear, its ascent is a dangerous one — as one French climbing website describes it, “a vertiginous high mountain route prone to natural hazards: rockfalls, crevasses, avalanches and extreme weather.”
And yet, the decree appears to be a first — no such regulation exists on any of the world’s mountains, and it threatens to unravel a centuries-old ideology based on the understanding of mountains as wild, inherently risky places of conquest, not to be confused with busy boulevards and cafe-lined city streets
The mayor’s order is more than a matter of public safety. It raises existential and philosophical questions, too: Where, and when, can we take life-threatening risk? Should we continue to see mountains as wild and dangerous natural places, or extensions of our urban environment?
Mr. Peillex indeed justified his decree by claiming that Mont Blanc is no longer a wild place, but as a destination for crowds of tourists and guides, an “urban space of commerce.” The mayor would have us believe that the meandering contours of Mont Blanc’s upper snowfields and wildflower-strewn buttes are now conterminous with weed-strewn sidewalks and traffic lights.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The nanny state will eventually bsn everything that involves a particle of risk. Then we’ll all live forever.
Sounds raciss
2 great books. Wilderness and the American mind by Roderick Nash. And Mountains without handrails. Unknown author.
They have a store in town that sells the stuff for about $300 dollars a piece.
Turning dangerous mountains (Mont Blanc, Mt Everest) into tourist destinations has made mountain climbing exponentially more dangerous. There are companies hauling people to the top, who have no business being at the top of any mountain, save for the fact that they can pay beaucoup bucks to be pushed, prodded and dragged up there. Read Into Thin Air. I sure hope the companies doing this are either already defunct, or soon will be. I love the ocean, but have a very healthy respect for it’s ability to take lives. These mountain climbing tourist companies should have more respect for the mountains they market.
Remember when Patricia Duff was married to Ron Perelman, for 18 months. The majority of the marriage she was climbing Everest.
Keep ‘em wild, and DO NOT call mountain rescue for your sprained ankles and skeeter bites.
12605 feet on the cable car is high enough for me. Folks can go the remaining 3000 feet without me.
Where, and when, can we take life-threatening risk?
= = =
Drive the 405 through LA.
Is there handicap parking at the top?
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