Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Sandy Pittman, Post 2 -Lexie
Although she proves to be an enthusiastic and friendly person, Sandy Hill Pittman seems to care more about the image and publicity rather than the actual sport of climbing. Sandy Pittman is a millionaire socialite-cum-climber who was back for her third attempt at Mount Everest, Krakauer explained. Pittman, however is a rather odd kind of client seeing as she planned to reach the summit while filing daily dispatches for NBC Interactive Media along the way. Sandy originally attempted to be the first woman to climb all 7 summits, only to be beaten by an Alaskan mountaineer. Of course, with the desire to stay in the media, Pittman decided to take another stab at Mount Everest. Sandy had recently been married to Bob Pittman, and being a seeker to public attention was a regular face in the New York society column. She and her husband were even The Couple of the Minute in 1992, before they got divorced of course. All though Pittman's motivation to climb Everest was real, one can't help but wonder if all she wanted was more attention in the public eye. As Beck Weathers recalled, "when sandy goes to climb a mountain, she doesn't do it like you and me. She brought this humongous duffle bag of gourmet food that took four people to even lift. She also brought a portable television and video player to watch movies in her tent. I mean hey, you got to hand it to her, there aren't many people who climb mountains in that high of style"(122). And that's just it. Any true climber wouldn't care about all of these material things. Hundreds of mountaineers have reached the summit without all of these unessiary items that just take up space, and energy to move. If Sandy truly cared about climbing and not just the luxury of a rich life, she wouldn't bring all of these things. Later in the novel, a Sherpa is almost killed trying to carry her equipment for publicity up the mountain. All though Sandy seems to be a nice person, her true desire to climb the mountain seems to be driven by the possibility of publicity.
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Although I do think part of the reason Sandy is climbing Everest is because she wants the publicity, she also enjoys climbing. Krakauer writes about how Sandy first started climbing when he is talking about her past. Krakauer write, "..she'd grown up in Northern California, where her father has introduced her to camping, hiking and skiing as a young girl. Delighting in the freedoms and pleasures of the hills, she continues to dabble in outdoor pursuits through her college years and beyond” (121). Sandy obviously enjoyed climbing before fame was even something she thought about. After her final climb on Everest, the climb, she reported in an article on Outside Online on August 15th 2006, “Then you pour coffee into the mug, and it's like a fake cappuccino. I thought it was clever. The men do it and people say, ‘The dude really loves his java.’ I do it and they say, ‘She's so spoiled.’” This is just one of the many rebuttals on Outside Online about Krakauers depiction of Sandy Pittman. Many other people wrote about the topic saying Kraukauer was being very biased about the articles Sandy brought on her trip. Krakauer used parts of a blog she posted before departing from base camp, “It looks like I’ll have as much computer and electronic equipment as I will have climbing gear…” (122). It turns out that Sandy had pledged to a group that she could blog, take pictures and take videos of her trip and experience and post them, this is why she had so much electronic gear.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of these analyses of Sandy. Ever since she was first described, I was curious and also cautious about her character. I began to wonder what was really going on with Pittman when Krakauer witnessed the sherpa Lopsang towing her up the mountain. Sandy said that she didn't ask for this, and Lopsang gave confusing accounts of the true events. In any case, not all the facts seemed to add up, and this curious event lead me to wonder about Sandy Pittman. And to believe, as Lexie said, that the main reason she wants to reach the top is for attention. No matter what her motivation, however, Pittman is extremely determined to reach the summit, as we learn when Krakauer describes her trudging past on her way up. Pittman is a slightly confusing character, but as Kayla explained, she wants to get to the top just like everyone else. I do not believe that any of her actions, although questionable, were intended to purposefully risk her own life or the life of anyone else on the mountain.
ReplyDeleteMost of these amatuers have locals haul their crap up to base camp for bread crumbs, she still has the individual record though. It took two whole teams of Sherpa's to haul it up. Sound like I'm assassinating her character? She did that to herself. While at base camp, she started screwing a snow board pro. Not the first person to do it for sure, but most tend to be quiet about it. Not Pittman. Everyone in BC could hear this for several nights. It really pissed off the Sherpa's. And she was aware of their belief that such acts would anger the god of the mountain. respect for local tradition and custom there should be a given, but not this chick. She made Lopsang Sherpa haul her BS electronics aoo the way to camp 4, literally the death zone. Even at base camp, she had TV's and dvd's hauled up there. Everyone talks about how krakauer tore her a new one in his book, but its the statements front other team members that is so striking. The man who saved her life had no good things to say about her (he died year and half later), even beck weathers (not known for controversy) cited the ridiculousness of it all. Breshears is very respected ijnthr climbing community, the fact he has never really rushed to her defense says it all too. Just two days before the summit bid, when even the expert guides were conserving energy for the bid, she climbed six hours down from base camp to have dinner with a couple of NYC elites that were flown in to get the media circus ready. Even Scott Fischer was incredulous at this. So that she was so low on energy that she had to literally be hauled up from camp 3 on makes it all look even worse. And it ended up killing people....
ReplyDeleteFrom The Balcony on, she made Lopsang Sherpa haul her sorry ass all the way to the summit. krakauer is right in his assessment that this one act directly led to deaths. Because Lopsang was supposed to meet the Adv. Consultants Sherpa both above the Balcony, and again at the Hillary Step, to Fix the Ropes. Ang Dorjee Sherpa refused to do this by himself (understandably, as the deal was for him.and Lopsang to do it). Lopsang was supposed to meet him and the two of them complete this task. The whole enterprise begins and ends with this task. Instead, Lopsang was well below hauling her ass to the top ON A SHORT ROPE! When Lopsang, who was directly responsible for ALL the clients, protested, she demanded he continue, stating she would not go down. Well Lopsang wasn't going down either, he needed to go UP and HELP everyone. THIS was the lynchpin that directly led to the disaster, as it caused huge bottlenecks at the balcony and then At the worst possible place, the Hillary Step. Of course, it was huge mistakes by everyone else to not turn around by 2pm, but they would not have had to of Lopsang was helping fixing the ropes instead of lugging the rich lady to the summit. The climbers all had to wait for 90 minutes while Harris and boukreev fixed the ropes. All that time standing still in -40 degrees, at almost 29,000 feet, using up all their supplemental oxygen. This led to most of the team summiting well past the 2pm turnaround time. It erased the safety margin of descending in daylight. Doing it at night is disastrous even for experts. Can't see boot trails and ropes get buried and can't see land features.
The beating she took by Krakauer in the best seller "Into Thin Air" as well as the Vanity Fair article was extremely well deserved. She was by no means the only reason that five of the combined team members died, but she was consistently the biggest contributor.
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