Erri De Luca: Everest and the million dollar queue

Not even in the Dolomites, in the height of summer on the most popular via ferrata, does a queue form like this one. It would be interesting to calculate what its worth: climbing permits, travel, guides, porters, supplementary oxygen bottles, clothing. It's a million dollar queue. So the fixed ropes up Everest have become a vast golf club with only one hole, and it's on the top. On a single day in May about one hundred and fifty waiting in line made the put.

This takes nothing away from the magnificent mountain which remains the perfect summit of mother earth. Her slopes have hosted the most yearned for adventures of sublime alpinists, their insomnia and their exhausting descents. The mountains remain unharmed and virgin with fresh snow covering the broken trails. However, the queue and its commercial march removes the meaning, valour and title of those who set foot on the summit in this way. I hope that one soon we can get there by helicopter, snap a photo and off we go, return home that same day.

>> the photo by Ralf Dujmovits

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