Everest 2014: Should Guides Disclose Deaths?

everest_2008_0542Twice while I was on an expedition a team member died. The guide company never mentioned it publicly. Were they correct? Let’s look at this in detail as it happens more than you know and there are two sides to this argument.

Every climber who joins a guided expedition signs a contract with words to the effect that removes the guide from any responsibility if death or injury occurs. Some even add that the member will not speak to the press or blog from the mountain without the guides review and/or permission.

Most everyone signs this without thought as they are there to climb, hospital not to be a reporter.

But when one of their teammates die, the fine print comes into focus. Can they tell their families? How about their friends. What about after the climb.  Did they really agree to be censored?

Transparent or Opaque?

Most important to climbers is why their guide never talked about the death. I fully understand that we live in a world of lawyers and people ing money when money is not due. But isn’t there a way to be transparent without being exposed to a lawsuit? Perhaps not.

Guides will defend their silence saying it is no one’s business other than the family. The family makes the decision if the death of their loved one is made public.

The cynical will say the guides are trying to protect their reputation and manage any bad news to protect their reputation even if they are not to blame.

News Travels Fast

Today with everyone having a cell phone, sat phone and computers, word spreads fast throughout the world when an incident occurs. However, the first reports always contain incorrect information. Let me emphasize this – in my experience almost every first report of a serious incident has wrong information all the way from the number of people involved, to the names, team, location and cause of death or severity of injury.

Information on the mountain is through word of mouth. So you have language and cultural issues. Usually there were only a few people near the incident so the majority of information is second hand at , more likely tenth hand.

Climbers desperate for information to use for their own safety are eager to hear the news. And it is inevitable they tell someone back home who tells someone else and on and on. Finally, there are some climbers who view themselves as a reporter and post the information on their website, based on these inaccuracies. It is no wonder the guide companies are hesitant to get involved.

But asking the teammates not to talk puts them in a bind with family back home wondering what happened and if their loved one is also in danger.

And future members wonder if the guide was not transparent about a death, what else are they hiding.

A Complicated Situation

In my two cases, as a teammate, I was devastated. When asked not to talk about the death, I felt shut down. The guides didn’t want to talk about it and my teammates spoke in whispers. Our teams carried on but there was a cloud over the expedition.  A simple ceremony would have brought acknowledgment and closure for many of us. We did make calls home to family at some point before the news became public through other sources. In both cases, the guides were not at fault.

The normal protocol when a death occurs is to notify the family and the officials of the country where the incident occurs. Beyond that it is up to the guide company. Some will post a short sentence stating that a death occurred, expressing condolences. Others will post a lot of details on what happened along with the condolences. But some will never mention the death, ever.

What is the correct approach?

I would like to hear your views.

Climb On!
Alan
Memories are Everything

Should Guides Disclose Deaths?

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20 thoughts on “Everest 2014: Should Guides Disclose Deaths?

  1. This is always a difficult subject. The increasing ubiquity of high-tech communications in the mountains means that bad news spreads like wildfire, first by word of mouth across the mountain and then, inevitably, back home and into the popular press. The “fog of war” atmosphere and the unreliability of the rumor mill means that the information is almost uniformly erroneous at the outset. While I have not been on a big-mountain expedition that experienced a death, I have more than once been on a mountain at the same time that a fatality occurred, either on another team or with a solo climber. I have seen first-hand the initial confusion, followed almost immediately by near-desperate attempts by those at home to find out what is going on. They understandably want to know, first, that you are OK and, second, that you will be safe.

    So what is a guide service to do? There is an understandable reluctance by guiding services to address accidents. Most believe it’s bad for business. But the truth of the matter is that accidents happen and bad news travels quickly. So it is naive to believe that prospective members will not find out about them. To the contrary, anyone seriously considering a big mountain expedition should have a realistic appreciation for the risks before they get to the mountain. These are not tourist excursions and even the members need to have both an appreciation for the risks and some ability to properly manage them.

    My strong view is that they need to be transparent as quickly as possible. Once the family has been notified, the guide service, almost all of which provide daily blog coverage of their more well-traveled expeditions, should let the world know that the incident occurred and that the other team members are OK, as well as whether the expedition intends to continue on or call it a day.

    But there is another value to more detailed reporting of events, especially fatalities. Mountaineers are constantly making risk-management decisions. Good decision making relies on a database of information, whether through one’s own experience or through the shared experiences of others. In making these decisions the details matter greatly. An in-depth review and analysis of accidents is necessary to acquire the knowledge to try to avoid bad decisions. That’s why “Accidents in North American Mountaineering,” while seemingly morbid to non-climbers, is an annual “must read.” It is similar to the regular “M and M” reviews at hospitals, where staff review bad outcomes. Only by examining these bad outcomes can we hope to avoid them in the future.

    For an example of courage in self-examination you only need to go back a couple of years. The early season of 2011 was particularly brutal on Denali. There were two major accidents involving guided expeditions early in the season. Both resulted in fatalities, including, in one case (and nearly in another), a guide. Mountain Trip, one of the guide services involved, posted an in-depth review of their accident, including many of the factors and the decision making that went into the accident and its aftermath. While I doubt their lawyers were thrilled, for climbers, the retrospective review offered valuable insights into, among other things, gear decisions, route decisions, accident management and triage decisions. It is one of the rare examples and I have always thought it was the right decision. They are to be commended for their candor.

  2. Hello, I am new to your blog but have been reading about Everest, and climbing for years. I am not a climber but I wanted to express an opinion still if that’s alright? Though I understand the sensitivity that is needed in reporting the death of someone, I feel their loss is very important and should be known. Maybe not the personal info, but the fact that a life was lost. Why? I feel that climbing these great mountains is not something to do on a whim. The fact that it could take your life from you makes the reality of climbing it more real. The death of others should have an effect on one’s decision to climb or not. It is not some easy choice to make. Guided or not. And even with a guide, your life can still be lost. Because that’s how dangerous it is to climb these mountains.

    I would trust a company or guide if they reported honestly. People die up there. Which is so sad and tragic. But people knowing about it can help their own choices when deciding if they want to try and climb or not. Knowing about ones death may prevent more from inexperienced people who think Everest is some kind of cake walk now. Because it isn’t. As someone who could hire myself a guide to take me up, the fact that even the most experienced people can die up there, makes me keep my feet at sea level.. and respect the mountain for all she is.

  3. I think it is absolutely imperative that guide companies be extremely transparent when concerning the death of members for a variety of reasons. In fact, I think that companies should be required to disclose this information. In respect to the matters of privacy, the deceased’s family should have final say on what information is disclosed.

    It’s surprising to me that the companies get the final say on this. If someone dies on an amusement ride or at a ski slope, reports have to be filed and such. If I’m paying an expedition company X amount of money for them to guide me up any mountain, their track record is one of the first things I look at when considering them.

    I also agree with a prior comment that mountaineering accidents can be learned from, and I think its important that information on accidents is disclosed and should be a requirement to operate a company.

  4. Hi Alan,

    Thanks for your post. What I love about mountaineering is that I take more ownership of my feelings and my actions than in any other time in my life. Every step I take, either up or down, is mine. I own it. That total ownership of my sprit is, I believe, the ultimate feeling of freedom. A Guiding Company, for me, is part of a means to this end. I don’t think that it is the guide service’s responsibility to report deaths of its members. The guide service that you and I used for Everest stated in its literature that it does not report accidents on the mountain. If reporting such things is important to a perspective climber, the guide service is only a phone call away. I must have called our guide company 10 times in the months leading up to our climb, asking them questions that were important to me.

    Zachary Zaitzeff

  5. Great question..Took me a few days to think about it. I do believe the deaths should be reported officially by the guide company BUT minus the name of the deceased. That should be done by the family, if they so desire. The guide company should only release facts in their report. Date, place, weather conditions etc..No opinions should ever be released by anyone. In this day and age of electronics, there are no secrets. Second hand info, gossip, here say, whatever you want to call it, is rarely or never accurate.

    Honesty and transparency would be 2 of the many things I would consider if I were choosing a guide company. I love climbing but will never get to Everest. I follow the Everest climbs because I love climbing– not for gossip.
    There are so many factors that come into play when you climb that high that it is impossible to blame any one person or incident.

    Climbing is dangerous. The risks are high. 99.99% of the people in the world have no business trying to climb Everest. The public should know and understand that. News agency should not sensationalize these deaths but should report them in a respectful way.

    1. I agree with Joann and a number of other people but would add that most people who climb or follow climbing realize that deaths on the mountains are a part of the experience, unfortunately. Looking for a guide group that has never had a death is not really practical in evaluating which group to use, but knowing how the death was handled and what lead up to it is useful information in evaluating the competency and efficacy of a guide group. The names of the deceased, in my opinion, should never be released by anyone outside of the family and the fact of the death should hopefully (depending on the circumstance) not be released until the family is notified so that fact can be part of the release of information and other families will not worry about their own loved ones. Quick notification should not be a huge problem these days with sat phones, email etc. In terms of release of information by individual climbers by blog post or telling friends, etc, I think the same standards should apply so that the least amount of unnecessary damage and anxiety will be caused by piecemeal or unsubstantiated information. I know that not everyone will abide by those policies and will do whatever they want to, but you can only ask and hope that individuals will think about everyone and not just themselves and those they care about only.

      These are just my opinions. It certainly is an interesting topic. Thanks for the discussion, Alan!

  6. I used to skydive a decade and a half ago. To jump one needed to be a member of the US parachute association. With the membership came their journal. This Journal had a section “Incident reports”, where they discussed the deaths in the sport since the previous issue. No person or drop zone name mentioned, but the events were detailed and so was what can be done to avoid similar incidents.

  7. Hey Alan,

    I agree with the sentiments expressed both in your article and by your readers, however, I think there are many aspects of deaths in climbing that get ignored. Permit me to draw an analogy. Medicine has a similar problem in reporting deaths – in particular, deaths in intensive care units (ICUs). Upwards of 500,000 deaths (between 8 and 20% of total admissions) occur every year in ICUs throughout the US but few people know much about these statistics. Why? Hospitals rarely report these figures because these numbers may misrepresent the actual risk presented to the . There are many factors that lead to a ‘s death in the ICU – some attributable to the hospital (infection, cleanliness, proper care, etc.) and others attributable to the ‘s condition.

    Back to climbing, there are many factors that lead to a person’s death on any climb. Some of these factors may be attributable to the expedition (leadership, guide decisions, etc) and others to the climber. What I fear is that too many people attribute the death to the expedition without careful thought to the entire situation. Thus, I would advocate for reporting deaths on an individual basis only when/if full details are known and verified. If there are no verifiable details about a person’s death, then reporting ought to be done in aggregate – similar to how hospitals report aggregate statistics about death rates. I realize that this method may sound rather inhumane but the information contained in a death notice may be misinterpreted. Aggregate statistics of deaths on a mountain by year – without mention of the team or guides when insufficient evidence exists – reduces the potential for misinterpretation.

    Just my 2 cents.

    Thanks for providing a great blog. I look forward to more engaging articles and discussions.

  8. It is my impression that part of what “top” expedition teams sell to customers is perceived safety. They are more than willing to advertise various support systems they have in place, and the implication is that the 2nd rate/”cheap” teams are cheap for a reason.

    But do we know this for a fact? Do we know that top teams have a better safety record than 2nd or 3rd tier teams?

    As far as I can tell, we don’t. Anecdotal evidence, perception, and past experiences are not an accurate way to validate team safety record.

  9. I’ve had strong feelings on this issue for years. I was always annoyed that deceased or injured climbers often seemed to vanish from blog posts, assuming it was the company covering their tails and in doing so disrespecting their member and his family. I appreciate now that there’s always more to any story and though my initial thoughts could well be true privacy issues for the those involved may well be driving the action. Who’s to say that climbers haven’t requested in advance that their names and incidents aren’t reported? All up though it’s a sensitive issue and I’m sure most do their best to handle all these things appropriately.

  10. Great article. This is an important question.

    Alan, correct me if I am wrong, this seems to be an unwritten industry standard? I don’t mean to suggest that there is a conspiracy among the guiding companies, or that the guiding companies necessarily have nefarious motivations? However, the notion of protecting the family can come across at worst, to the consumer as being pretty convenient for the guiding company no?

    If it were up to me (which it clearly isn’t), the solution would be that all climbers agree that their deaths should be announce publicly one to two weeks after their potential accident. I believe this Information that future climbers, and more importantly future climbers families should know. But I guess it is also reasonable to expect climbers and climbers families to know that this is a dangerous sport?

    Or maybe not?

    My family was highly stressed (and shocked!) to read in the New York Times of, my more or less, climbing past two deaths on Denali in 2008. They thought the mountain was safer than it is. Maybe most families don’t realize how dangerous the sport is?. I certainly didn’t want my family to know how dangerous the sport is and maybe neither did the guiding company? My family has never been traumatized reading a climbing company blog, and that has certainly made it easier for me to go on these trips. So maybe I should be advocating for silence? But I am not.

    It’s a complicated issue. I also need to say that I have had a fantastic experience with most of all of the major US guiding companies. They are all amazing…. I feel super confident that if something were to happen to me that they would handle my family to the absolute very best of their abilities, and that is the most important issue.

    Another question that I have is why a guiding company can not mention a loss without mentioning the name of the climber? Wouldn’t this satisfy everyones needs. Maybe there is a very good explanation of this that I can not think of?

    Thanks Alan!

    1. I don’t think there is an unwritten rule given the wide variation in how companies handle this situation. The top companies do tend to say the least however in my observations.

  11. I haven’t cast my vote yet because while I believe in transparency, the attention from the non-climbing media bothers me. The general media doesn’t accept that climbing is dangerous; for them climbing is deadly and helps sell newspapers. Still, the psuedo gag order on the other members encourages any facts to get muddled in the telephone game.

  12. Alan, you come up with so many thought provoking articles and questions. This is another one and part of the whole “censorship” that exists on many expeditions.
    I feel that there is no place for censorship in the mountains. We all have a responsibility for accurate and respectful reporting, but in our age of social media, technological access and blogging, censorship seems so archaic and anachronistic.
    Years ago I worked as a guide for an Everest expedition and was banned from blogging on their expedition website because I was too truthful and I was told it would drive future customers away. Another company that I worked for had an expedition blog that was so “economical with the truth” that the members called it the “blog of lies”.
    There are ways to be respectful of the family’s needs and still be open and honest about tragedies. If you’re not telling the truth, then you are complicit in a lie and a cover-up and if a company is that unethical, what else might it be unethical about??

  13. Having been on expeditions on Everest and Cho-Oyu where there were deaths nearby but not on our team I can understand and relate to many of the points you make.

    My biggest concern is firstly to the safety of other people on the mountain. If anything can be learned or related right away to others to help reduce further injuries then it absolutely needs to be disclosed. Transmitting information to prevent injuries in no way requires personal information such as the victims name, guide company, etc. This should allow the rapid flow of information while permitting relatives to be notified properly.

    Second I believe in learning from mistakes. This is in part the mission of the American Alpine Club’s “Accident’s in North American Mountaineering” book each year. That book is required reading in The Mountaineers training courses so that student’s learn from others mistakes.

    Third I think the safety record of guides and providers needs to be reviewed and accurate. What ever the cause of the accident a long track record of issues from a provider should be a signal to the market and one that customers need to have access to. I’ve seen some providers claim “100% safety” where they actually meant ‘well some people got frostbite and almost were left for dead, but they didn’t die so it was a safe season’.

    The biggest challenge to all of these is the second hand or further nature of information collection, reporting, and distribution. In that regard, those reporting need to use care to distinguish fact and observation from others and self moderate their disclosures. For example in last year’s Camp 2 ‘fight’ I’m sure a ton of 3rd hand info was posted online which was wrong… those poster’s need to be more careful.

  14. Hi Alan, thanks for another thought provoking article, and I’m looking forward to following the rest of your Everest coverage again in the run up to the new season.

    As you point out there a few places in the world as ripe for gossip and misinformation than expedition base camp on a commercial peak. In addition to this the mainstream media has a history of exploiting bereavement to pursue an agenda best described as “Everest bashing”. I believe that for these reasons operators have a responsibility to report fatalities as fairly, honestly and accurately as they can. This helps to reduce unnecessary suffering to friends and family, and lessens the ability of the media to sow the seeds of hate by helping to educate people.

  15. I think the benefits of transparency dramatically overwhelm any other option in the event of a climbing death. The one exception might be when the member elects prior to the climb to make no mention of their own death, should that happen, but I personally wouldn’t even offer that option if I was a guide.

    Regardless, a small ceremony at camp, a discussion of what went wrong and why, an opportunity for those immediately impacted to heal and mostly importantly to learn and grow from the experience are all things that I can only imagine would help everyone involved, and perhaps many more individuals as well.

  16. Another benefit to public disclosure of climbing deaths, is that we can sometimes learn from them, especially in cases where deaths are avoidable. Unfortunately the information released does not often provide the technical details required to know what went wrong.

    Even in cases where the death was unavoidable, public disclosure is a good reminder of the risks of mountaineering.

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