Stairway to heaven

By Economist.com

How deadly are the world's highest mountains?

ON MAY 29th 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to stand atop Mount Everest in the Himalayas. Sixty years later the world's tallest peak, at 8,848 metres high, has lost none of its awesome majesty. But it is not quite as forbidding as it once seemed, having seen 5,654 ascents since Hillary's and Norgay's (as of March 2012). Just last week Yuichiro Miura, an 80-year-old Japanese mountaineer, became the oldest person to make it to the top and down again. The youngest was only 13. The mountain, though, remains a deadly foe: 223 people have perished on its slopes over the decades, including 58 who died after successfully reaching the summit, more than on any other 8,000-metre peak. Yet looking at the ratio of deaths to safe returns, Everest's smaller and less well-trodden Himalayan sisters tend to be much deadlier. For every three thrill-seekers that make it safely up and down Annapurna I, one dies trying, according to data from Eberhard Jurgalski of 8000ers.com, collected in his forthcoming book "On Top of the World: The New Millennium", co-authored by Richard Sale. This goes some way to explaining why it is the least popular of the 14 mountains over 8,000 metres, having seen just 182 safe returns. That is despite being the first of such peaks to be climbed, on June 3rd 1950 by Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal.