Perhaps it is inevitable that there is almost no place on Earth, except perhaps the bottom of the Marianas Trench, COVID will not eventually infect.
However… there’s being cautious and then there’s being silly.
Remember when Trump banned air travel from China? Well… not to be outdone, China is going to put some kind of barrier on the summit of Mt. Everest to keep infected people from climbing out of Nepal and down into China.
Guys… I can’t tell you how dumb this is.
So, so dumb…
Many of the reasons why it’s so dumb are obvious (COVID is rarely transmitted outdoors and certainly not in gale force winds at altitude between climbers wearing oxygen masks, COVID afflicted patients can’t breathe much less climb at 30,000 feet, and transmitting COVID requires close contact for a period of time that is longer than anyone has ever stayed on the summit of Everest… to name but a few), but I was once a high-altitude mountaineer (still am, I suppose) and there’s at least one element of this stupidity that you probably have not considered.
Mountains like Everest are climbed in stages… depending on how you climb Everest you might establish as many as six camps on your way up the mountain. At each camp you shed more and more of your gear so that on Summit day you are climbing as lightly and quickly as possible. This means that everything you need to survive the descent off the mountain is stored in tents scattered across the face of the mountain…
…thousands of feet behind and below you.
The only way to descend down the Chinese side of the mountain after ascending the Nepalese side is to have a second logistical team meet you at the summit with a redundant set of gear and food. And I don’t even want to think about the logistics of getting back to basecamp on the Nepalese side, from China, to collect all your personal crap AFTER you’ve spent a month climbing the highest mountain on Earth.
No one does this. It makes no sense.
This is stupid virus theater… like just about everything else in this ridiculous pandemic.
*** The photo at the top of this post is from my successful 2005 summit of Denali (20,310′)
Stoke fear everywhere and beg the nanny state to protect you from all harm. Seems like it’s been an effective political strategy for the last 14 months.