Last fall the mountain known in Tibet as Chomolungma, or Goddess Mother of the World, and in the West as Everest permitted itself to be climbed by 33 people, withheld permission (in the form of benign weather) from a much larger number and killed nine climbers. Are those good odds or bad? A flatlander's question, an observer decides, after asking it of Stacy Allison and Peggy Luce; to mountaineers, the answer is a shrug. The odds are the odds. Allison, a contractor and house framer from Portland, Ore., and Luce, a bicycle messenger from Seattle, members of a U.S. expedition from...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
