This has been one of the deadliest climbing seasons in history on Mount Everest, with 11 climbers dying as crowded conditions choked the route to and from the summit.
As John Oliver pointed out on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight,” a big part of the problem was the large number of inexperienced climbers who had no business being on the mountain but were hoping for bragging rights. Meanwhile, sherpas do most of the work and face most of the risks, which as Oliver pointed out, makes their job one of the most dangerous on the planet.
“If your friend ran a marathon, but only because someone else ran 1,000 miles back and forth bringing them Gatorade and carrying a dining table, you might not cheer quite so hard at the fucking finish line,” he said.
One reporter on the mountain attempted to ask a sherpa about the ethics of paying them to risk their lives as guides. When the sherpa said he considered the climbers to be like family, the reporter quickly hugged him.
“That is not the warm embrace of family,” Oliver said. ”That is one man physically squeezing the white guilt out of another.”
But there is an ethical way to climb Mount Everest, take the perfect photo and never risk a single life. Oliver shared his plan in the clip above, or you can simply visit his new website: TheTopOfMountEverest.com for the perfect Instagram without leaving home.
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A long exposure of the Mount Everest range seen from Syangboche, a small Himalayan settlement some 140kms (87 miles) northeast of Kathmandu on December 4, 2009. (PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP/Getty Images)
Nepalese young climber Nima Chemji Sherpa is welcomed by family and friends on her arrival at Tribhuvan domestic airport after summiting Mount Everest, in Kathmandu on May 25, 2012. Nima Chemji reached Everest summit on 19 May 2012 and she claims to be the youngest woman ever to scale Mount Everest. (PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP/GettyImages)
Nepalese mountaineer Apa Sherpa, who has scaled Mount Everest a record-breaking 21 times, is photographed while on the Great Himalaya Trail, one of the longest and highest trekking routes in the world, in the Nepalese Himalayas on February 13, 2012. ( Sameer Jung THAPA/AFP/Getty Images)
This picture taken on May 17, 2010 shows Nepalese sherpas after retrieving two corpses of climbers that were left on the world's highest mountain during the Everest clean-up expedition at Mount Everest. Since 1953, there have been some 300 deaths on Everest. Many bodies have been brought down, but those above 8,000 metres have generally been left to the elements -- their bodies preserved by the freezing temperatures. (NAMGYAL SHERPA/AFP/Getty Images)
In this Thursday, May 9, 2002 file photo, Tamae Watanabe, right, of Japan poses with a photograher Noriyuki Muraguchi at a base camp on the foot of Mt. Everest in Nepal. A 73-year-old Watanabe has climbed Mount Everest, smashing her own record to again become the oldest woman to scale the world's highest mountain. (AP Photo/Office Seven Summits, File)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 file photo courtesy of SNV Nepal, Great Himalaya Trail Development Programme, a trekker sits by Birendra Lake in the Manaslu region, part of the Great Himalaya Trail route, in Nepal. In the shadow of Mount Everest and its magnetic lore, a cross-border route with a grand name, the Great Himalaya Trail, is being touted as an epic, untapped alternative to the bucket-list trek to base camp on the world's highest mountain. (AP Photo/SNV Nepal, Great Himalaya Trail Development Programme, Samir Thapa, File)
In this Oct. 27, 2011 file photo, the last light of the day sets on Mount Everest as it rises behind Mount Nuptse as seen from Tengboche, in the Himalaya's Khumbu region, Nepal. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer, File)
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