THE OUTDOORS PAGE : HIGH HOPES : There Must Be Room at the Top for Three More

Two hundred Japanese, Chinese and Nepalese spent $12.5 million and a life to show a dozen of their number on live television from the top of Mt. Everest last week.

The feat raised the hackles of some traditional mountain climbers.

Jim Whittaker, a member of the first American team to reach that 29,028-foot summit 25 years ago this month, called the recent feat “a mob scene.”

Malcolm Daly, a mountaineering instructor and guide in Denver, said: “I have mixed feelings about it. Anything that brings climbing and mountaineering into people’s living rooms is generally a plus.

“But when you move 200 people into an area that is fragile culturally and environmentally, it kind of gives me a rash. The area around Everest is getting pretty trashed out, anyway.”

Rick Ridgeway of Ventura, however, has been on Everest as well as 28,250-foot K-2, the world’s second-highest mountain, and has no problem accepting either the massive assault or its media-hype climax.

“I think it’s fine,” Ridgeway said. “It may make people think we’re even crazier. (It) was a marvelous achievement.

“They reduced their cameras to a size where they could mount them on their helmets and free up their hands to climb. More than anything I’d ever seen, it gave me the feel for what it’s really like to be climbing through the climber’s eyes, as he moved his head up and down looking for handholds and footholds and seeing where the other climbers were.”

But the thought of climbing Everest with an army is too much for Whittaker.

“The trend has been away from those large expeditions to make it more challenging,” he said from his home in Port Townsend, Wash. “Part of the fun of climbing is to see if you can do it. What they were doing is guaranteeing the summit.”

Daly added: “I suspect that massive amounts of money and people thrown at a mountain make it easier to climb. With (that many) people climbing, they knew they were never going to run out of oxygen.

“And if you know you’re going to make the top, that kind of spoils it. From a purely personal standpoint, when the outcome is uncertain, the experience is better.”

Last week’s expedition split to tackle Everest from opposite sides and meet at the top--a first. Then a few from each group went down the other side, which was not a first, since Whittaker’s group led by Norman Dyhrenfurth had descended by a different route in 1963.

Technically, the Japanese also weren’t the first to transmit TV images from the top. David Breashears of Newton, Mass., did that for an ABC special in 1984, but because the Chinese refused to allow an earth relay station at the base on their side, the pictures were sent 18 miles into Nepal, taped and transmitted to New York via satellite.

In any event, the recent project smacked of a stunt to some.

“The Japanese are as aggressive in mountaineering these days as they are in business,” said Dan McConnell of Seattle, who promotes and organizes world-class climbs, including Whittaker’s. “But you have to respect the individual effort the people made to climb Everest because it’s not an easy mountain in any way, shape or form.”

Still, all of the climbers noted that there is little room at the top for originality anymore.

“There are only a few things left to do that are firsts that haven’t been taken on Everest before.” McConnell said. “In order to do that, you’ve got to get kind of into the stunt category. We’ve had people over there trying to take hang gliders off it.”

Whittaker thinks he has a better idea. Last weekend, as the huge Far Eastern party was descending Everest, he returned from Beijing, China, with permission to lead a combined Soviet-Chinese-American expedition up Everest in 1990 from the north side in what was Tibet until the Chinese occupied it in 1951.

“I’m planning the same kind of television coverage on top,” Whittaker said. “But it won’t be near as big a group or expedition. My budget looks like a million (dollars).

“We’ll have only 4 climbers from each country for a total of 12. We’ll have an interpreter and a doctor from each team that can maybe pack some loads. We’re not planning to use Sherpa (guides). The total party will be 10 from each country for 30, and we’ll work together on one route.”

When Whittaker climbed Everest in ‘63, 10 years after the initial ascent by Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the group included 19 Americans and 37 Sherpa bearers.

“It was the first traverse of an 8,000-meter peak. Also the highest bivouac. The second assault got trapped out above the high camp. They spent the night without oxygen and sleeping bags or anything. They were lucky to survive. They lost their toes and some of their fingers.

“On K-2, (which) we climbed in 1978, we used only one bottle of oxygen and had only 12 on the team, with no Sherpa--and that’s only three rope lengths lower than Everest. We also had three women in the party.”

Whittaker considers his new project more of a noble effort. He sees one Soviet, one Chinese and one American standing together on top of the world, on camera.

“There’s a lot of concern about the superpowers blowing themselves up,” Whittaker said.

“What I want to do is to plant all three flags and have the three stand up there with their arms around each other and speak to the respective leaders of their countries and say, ‘We did this to show that through cooperation and friendship and working together, very difficult goals can be reached, and we stand here speaking out for peace.’ It would be a real message.

“The Soviets and Chinese have ascended the mountain individually--the Soviets from Nepal because they haven’t been permitted into China since ’52. But I’ve never roped up with a Soviet or Chinese.”

Up on the mountain, it will be up to Whittaker to sort out any political problems.

“We have to stand on the summit with one person from each country, and in order for that to happen the final assault will have to take place with three people moving from high camp--a Soviet, a Chinese and an American.

“That means we’re really going to have to work together. There will be competition among the climbers themselves just to be as strong as they can, because the final selection made by the Russian and Chinese deputy leaders and myself will be to pick the strongest and put them on the first assault.”

“What if you’ve been wanting to climb that mountain all your life? Every mountaineer worth his salt wants to climb Everest. What if you are a few hundred feet below the summit and somebody’s sick, and you can just unrope and walk up there? That’s going to be a powerful pull.”

Whittaker, 59, doesn’t think he’ll return to the summit himself.

“Hell, I’m too old,” he said. “I’m going to leave it to those young Turks. I know what’s up there. I’ll stroll up to 26,000 or so, but I want the expedition to succeed.”