Now: Past Experience

I cannot say the mountaineering "finished."  Every moment including writing this turns out the new, totally newness of thinking aback.  Perhaps it revolves around the mystery of "now," the substance of time.

The very minutes I was being on the top had least spread out any special present.  It just was.  Arriving back to the BC without any serious injury to all our members and receiving a great welcome from the senior members of the alpine club at the camp, already the "climbing up" became some delightful incidents.  When the hired Sherpas were happy with the "summit bonus," when all the members enjoyed a farewell party at Kathmandu, when we met a number of people waiting for us at the Incheon airport, etc. the meaning of the expedition continuously changed.

It is Gilles Deleuze who connects time with now: There is no such a thing past or future; there is only now.  "Now" is composed of the two, "to the past" and "to the future."  Then, it is easy to remember something called "past experience" is made up from now, which always cannot be fixed, as flowing river.

The Photo Exhibition of the Expedition

Kathmandu: Meaningless World

Kathmandu is a strange city.  Once everything therein was out of sight, as you did not concern at all; while again everything does not hold any meaning, all the voidness filled with the air.

I was trying to find out what were filled up with my mind.  Let's seat on an internet cafe, logging on email, Facebook... But failed.  Too much energy needed even to remember out ID and password.  In the website, another person with same face of mine looked at me.  Turned off the computer.  Not yet.  Now I needed some other.

There was only left emptiness.  Hornbein paralized himself: Dreams come true; however, nobody answers my question.  Why people lost their fingers and toes.  Why some do not return from the mountain.  Why we intended to climb on.  Why.  We did, but, there was (still) no answer.

I was not anymore "mountain" but also not yet "everyday."  I was "..." as Martin Heidegger impressively describes.  The life, the world in front of me did not hold any meaning.  There was only the flow of time, which is the life itself.  No necessity as well as no way to endow meaning onto the world and myself.

So far was the prologue of the start of my pages.  It may resemble what Heidegger progressed from the "former Heidegger" (ontology) to the "later Heidegger" (neo-ontology).  It is from humanist phenomenology to what recent philosophers call "post-phenomenology."  From Sartrean existentialism to Deleuze.  From the Cartesian to the Peircean Monism.

What is Decision to Live

Of course the reason of why we prepare for the future and try to avoid danger is to lessen the possibility of being fallen into more serious problems.  Nobody does not want to be death.  On the other hand, however, it is also true that nobody can choose one's own life lives.

The news hit me when I arrived back to C2 in the evening of the exhaustible day was a very sad one.  Two Koreans from the other Korean team were missed during their summit try.  The member of the team, Mr. Kim, had tried his best at the C2 in order to draw any other's help who were at C4.  However, all the Sherpa couldn't go up since they also needed to help their own clients.  What matters worse, the night began to blow the jet stream over 8,000m.

Five climbers including one of the two Koreans were dead that night.

I am alive now as writing this.  However, was I clever, strong enough to choose life, with a better decision?  No.  I did not know my decision was right when I had to decide.  Only what I did was TO ASSURE of me that mine would be right.  Nobody cannot foresight one's own future.  Mountaineering will be seen as the game against unknown; however, the rule of the game will also to be unknown.

Seonpil climbing the sheer Lhotse Face

Turning back to Life

The American Tom Hornbein, the first ascentionist of the Everest West-Ridge in 1963, defines mountaineering:  Mountaineering is the struggle between the will to life and to the top.

I finally saw Jeonghwan at around 8650m turning around his way, from the top to the camp below, at 7AM as I was climbing down from the top.  His turning aback will mean his purpose of the top being end with unfruitful, no more the rule of mountaineering Hornbein defines would hold.  However, it is for the finish of mountaineering: Going back to his friends, to other human beings, to the world in which one does not need to risk one's own death as everyday life goes.  It is rather to achieve the spirit of mountaineering, for he will be able to think and talk about his climbing.

Jeonhwan looking over Makalu, the fifth highest mountain in the world

Summit

It was 4:30PM when I arrived finally at the last camp on the "South Col" as high as 8,000m.  The summit plan should be reconsidered as soon as possible.  Previously the idea was that most of us would arrive the camp at around 2 or 3PM, which would give us enough time to enjoy short hours of rest with the supplemental oxygen, getting up 6PM and braking up from the camp to the top 8PM.  However, now we faced two problems: Too many people that likely block the way to the top, and not enough time to take a rest at the camp.  

"Are you Okay, Jeonghwan?"

"Ya, of course."

"Then, let's start earlier than others. If we packed up among them, then we won't be able to move back and forth."

Thus, it was only 7:45PM that I and my "personal" Sherpa Ngaa Tenji began to move from the camp.  There were a couple of lights seen from the face upward of the big mountain which were probably of the season-first summitters'.  No earlier climbers on that day before us.  The air in the evening was cold.

In the film Apocalypse Now (1979) there was a focus on "horror."  If the particular bodily state dominates over the person, as the case of Vietnam War in the movie shows, all the human rules are to be reorganized in accordance to the "first" rule, which is horror in the movie.  

It was deadly thirst that reorganized my all the journey to the top at that time.  The small water bottle soon went empty.  The two hours of rest at the final camp was too short to melt down ice and snow into water enough for the five people on the tent.  My bare consciousness had no choice but to imagine the scene of drinking water without restriction.  No concerns on climbing, no fear, no worry, and no delight being on the top.

The "Balcony" (8400m), the South Summit (8750m), and the famous Hillary-Step I have crossed over and climbed up without much consideration.  It was already almost the top when my watch showed 3AM.  Still dark around.

I needed a photo on the top.  It IS significant to share my getting on the top with others.  To see their pleasure, or rather their recognition of me would toggle the climbing into my experience, experience deemed to risk my life.  

Therefore, we found a small cave right below the top in which two to three persons could take a rest, kicking into it, falling into a deep nap but short as we sat on one's own bag.  It was too cold, although the temperature was just around -30 centigrade, for we did not move one and half hour in the bench.  At 4:30AM we got up and headed to the top.

I had had driven throughout the vast desert in California in an evening some time ago alone.  Then, a fire was encaptured my sight.  The sky, and the world, was half red and half black.  The color of fire looked as if overwhelms the blacken world.  

The sea of cloud was so vast to the whole east side of the mountain, the Tibetan side I firstly saw during the entire climbing.  And, the far end of the sea, not the small end, but the spouting out end, there was a presage of the sun, the symbol of energy, the maxim of life, the rule that governs the world.

Pictures were taken.  All the fingers freezing.  Only ten minutes on the top were not short amount of time since the strength of experience never be dominated by the duration.  Man overcomes time.  

Young Hoon at the top of Mt. Everest at the dawn of May 19th.

The fifth highest mountain Makalu (8463m) seen from the top of Mt. Everest

The chain of head lamps following from the C4, 9PM May 18th, photo taken 8,300m.

"Amusement Park"

On May 18, beginning the day of climbing at the C3 to C4, I was but to be shocked with the crowd.  The endless chain of people were climbing up to the Lhotse Face in a line.  It looked like some three hundreds or more.  I was never heard about this before, as all of the others were.  The worst is that you have to wait even though you may walk faster.

Simone Moro, the well-known Italian mountaineer, describes his being among the group of people as being in an "amusement park," and the people as begging a "jewel which they want to purchase and conquest."  

Why were so many people packed there?  According to the Nepalese official record of the number of Mt. Everest climbers throughout the years, this year did not show the biggest number.  It is rather ordinary.  

Tashi Sherpa, the basecamp manager of the "Seven Summit Treks" agency in Nepal, narrates differently.  He accuses the reason of "rush hour" on the face to the "Himex" team, the biggest commercial expedition of that time, managed by the New Zelander Russel Brice.  "The R.B. team (Himex) was initially to make the route to the top at least until the early May.  But, they didn't."  The New Zelander decided to forgive the year's summit climb, for he and others had concluded the condition of the mountain was worse to climb up.  They withdrew from the BC as late as May 8th without fixing the rope nor letting other teams know their decision.  Therefore, Tashi believes, the rest of the climbers could not help but to lose the better chances to try summit before the horrible day.  

The photos of the crowd on the face, however, have covered the world news headlines.  And the typical way of depicting the "crowd" on the world highest mountain is not different from how Simone has cynically censured. Their purpose is only the conquering the top of the world; they have no serious consideration of the spirit of mountaineering; they are not "alpinist" but only "novice" who without the help of Sherpa would be fallen to death.  However, Simone, as well as me, was one of the crowd.  

Thus, here are my questions: what is so-called "alpinism," and how does it differ from the naive philosophies of the crowd, if they are unlike from the genuine climbers?  I am not asking the should-be of the sport.  Nor, I am not querying the history of the sport.  My intention is a philosophical one: How one experience can be translated into diverse languages?

The Lhotse Face

From the C2, the more serious climbing is waiting for the mountaineers.  The sheer Lhotse Face, as high as more than 1,000m in its height, overwhelms the smallest human beings.

Throughout the April, due to the less amount of snowfall stones as well as icy face has been uncovered, which should have not been so.  It was a critical issue.  In every afternoon when the sun heated the face the ice particles and stones began to fall.  The miserable climbers had no choice but to hope those bullets would avert themselves.  But for some it was unfortunate.  Not a few had to be evacuated with bigger or smaller injuries in their arm, face, legs, only except the head that the shabby helmet luckily covered.  Danger did only come to us as if unseen shots.

Seonpil Climbing the Lhotse Face

The Camp 3 on the midway of the Lhotse Face.  This tent was half-broken with an avalanche a few days later