“The ascent of Everest, like any other human endeavor, is only to be judged by the spirit in which it is attempted.”

“The ascent of Everest, like any other human endeavor, is only to be judged by the spirit in which it is attempted.” Eric Shipton’s 1938 principle, quoted by Galen Rowell, offers a standard for judging the 1996 Everest tragedy beyond its tally of deaths: the motives and manner of the attempt matter as much as its outcome. Rowell uses Shipton’s words to question a commercial, publicity-saturated era in which blame threatens to eclipse the spirit of mountaineering.

Origin and Principle

Shipton wrote after several attempts on Everest that an ascent should be judged by the spirit in which it is undertaken. He rejects several possible motives in the passage Rowell quotes: competing because others have failed, pursuing the summit simply because it rises 28,000 feet above the sea, patriotic ambition, and cheap publicity. The principle does not make the summit itself the measure of worth; it directs attention to the reasons and conduct behind the attempt.

Shipton’s appeal is also a warning against turning an expedition into a public campaign. He objects to attacking peaks with an army and broadcasting departures and progress to a sensation-seeking world. The contrast sets personal endeavor against spectacle: publicity can change what a climb appears to be for, even before its outcome is known.

Rowell’s Application to the 1996 Disaster

Rowell places the principle against the mass appeal of the 1996 Everest story. He argues that the story’s public force comes from the way it appears to violate Shipton’s tenets, written more than half a century earlier. In this new media environment, he says, blame has become paramount. The old question of why and in what spirit people climb gives way to a public contest over responsibility.

His framing belongs to a broader critique of the tragedy’s coverage. Rowell describes how the deaths of five climbers on May 10 became an American media spectacle, shaped by paying clients, online reports, a journalist climbing on assignment, and a broadcast phone call from a dying climber to his wife. In this account, the human tragedy—with its heroism and compassion—was displaced by a trial-like spectacle in which no participant escaped damage. Shipton’s maxim consequently becomes not only a standard for climbers but a way to question what the public and media choose to judge.

Significance

The principle holds open a distinction between the fact of an ascent and the spirit of the attempt. Rowell does not use it to declare a final verdict on the climbers’ motives; instead, he identifies the stakes of that question. If the motives attributed to contemporary Everest climbers are indeed questionable, he warns, mountaineering itself is in trouble. The quotation’s force lies in making motive central while resisting the reduction of a complicated disaster to blame alone.