The weather was unseasonably cold and icy in Seattle as The Mountaineers climbing club on January 11 convened an expert panel accustomed to far worse conditions at much higher altitudes. Senior among the group was moderator Dr. Tom Hornbein, whose 1963 traverse of Mount Everest took place in an age when a party — if it made the summit — was sure to stand there alone. To lend perspective — but certainly not endorse — today’s commercialized era of crowds, fixed lines, and satellite phones were local guides Dan Mazur, Eric Simonson, and Ed Viesturs (the latter having largely forsaken guiding for collecting 8,000-ers on his own). In particular, Mazur’s role last year in rescuing Australian climber Lincoln Hall, controversially left for dead by his own party above 28,000 feet, has led to much discussion about ethics in the Death Zone. That incident came soon after British soloist David Sharp perished as 40-odd climbers passed by his location on the fixed lines, none of them (who saw the fallen man) interrupting their summit bids to attempt a rescue. Both scenarios figured prominently in remarks by the panelists, who also included climber-journalists Ed Douglas (who covered the Sharp incident last fall for Outside magazine and is the author of Chomolungma Sings the Blues) and Michael Kennedy (former publisher and editor of Climbing), and University of Washington zoology professor Ray Huey, a non-mountaineer who has done extensive statistical analysis on Everest fatality rates. 

In a full room of more than 300 Northwest climbers, most raised their hands when asked if they’d watched the recent Discovery Channel reality TV series “Everest: Beyond the Limit,” which followed a party whose members passed by the dying Sharp. More casual television viewers might think Everest is unreasonably deadly, particularly since the 2006 death toll, generally estimated at 11, is second to the Into Thin Air storm year of 1996. 

This was an impression Huey quickly sought to dispel. “A lot of what’s presented in the media is very far wrong,” he said. “The death rate has actually been declining since the early ’80s.” Presenting graphs based on data reported by the Everest historian Elizabeth Hawley to the American Alpine Club, Huey debunked notions that the annual death rate verges on 10 percent (considering only those climbers who summit). Taking the number of all people attempting the mountain (clients, guides, Sherpas, and self-supported parties), he gets an aggregate figure of less than one percent for the years 1963-92. Huey explained that there are now fewer fatalities from falls, chiefly because of fixed lines, which have also raised the individual summit rate in the last six years to 44 and 36 percent on the south (Nepalese) and north (Chinese) sides, respectively.