For the retired businessman bored with zero gravity flights, heli- skiing, flying ex-military Russian Mig fighter jets and swimming with sharks, climbing Everest can be the perfect next date on the adventure calendar.
But research on more than 2 000 expeditions to the world’s highest peak has shown that older climbers are more likely to fail and more likely to die on the mountain. Those over 60 are three times as likely to die in their attempt compared with younger climbers.
Since the growth of commercial guided expeditions in the early 1990s, Everest has become a playground for those with time and money seeking high-altitude excitement and danger. This spring more than 600 people reached the summit and there were six deaths. Most climbers will have been part of commercial operations that charge between $10 000 and $65 000 for a guide, Sherpas, equipment and backup.
”They are often affluent and successful professional individuals who are used to achieving a variety of goals in their professional and personal life. Everest is one of those ticks,” said Mike Grocott, an expert in intensive-care medicine at University College London who led the Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition this year. But these people often come to the mountain with less physical and psychological experience of mountaineering and less climbing expertise, he said.
”It has attracted more older people who have got time and money on their hands,” said Tom Bridge of Jagged Globe, a specialist mountaineering company that takes clients up Everest. He said that on the Chinese side of the mountain — the north ridge — there are companies offering a ”skeleton service” with no selection over who they accept. ”We have seen people having a go at Everest who really shouldn’t be there,” he said.
The research looked at 2 211 climbers going back to the 1950s. In the early decades less than a fifth were 40 or older, but between 2000 and 2005 almost half the climbers were in this age bracket.
In the same period over-60s have increased from 0,3% to 3,6%. Since 2000 an average of 13 sexagenarians have attempted the climb each year. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were 33 and 39 when they became the first men to climb Everest in 1953.
Raymond Huey at the University of Washington in Seattle and his colleagues found that older climbers were less successful. About a third of those under 40 make it to the summit, but by age 60 only about 13% succeed, they report in the journal Biology Letters.
This lowered success rate does not seem to be as a result of older climbers using their experience to back off from difficult situations. One in 20 are killed on the mountain, around three times the overall average. And if they do make it to the summit they have an even higher chance of death — a quarter don’t make it back down, more than 10 times the average.
The researchers also looked at differences between men and women climbers, who make up about 10%. They found that gender made no difference to success or death rates.
Despite the increased risks for older people, Grocott said that they could be managed if climbers were given the right advice and undertook the correct training and preparation.
”You need some climbing experience and as a completely separate thing you need to find out how you can tolerate hypoxia — whether you get altitude illness. The best way of knowing that is to do it,” he said. — Â