Another IGCSE question, a practice for my directed writing test last Wednesday.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing this letter to you to express my opinion with regards to mountain climbing on Everest. I strongly believe that mountain climbing should be banned.

As you might know from the recent news articles, there number of accidents on Everest was increasing in the recent years. Indeed, climbing any mountains with a high altitude is highly dangerous. As more and more people are involved in climbing Everest, the problem was gradually noticed by the public. Climbing is dangerous to people for many reasons. It is noticeable that the weather on Mount Everest changes quickly. The sky could be clear seconds ago and being covered completely by blankets of clouds in less than 1 hour. As a result, most human bodies are uncomfortable to the environment on a snow mountain naturally. When most climbers get to the top of Everest, after more than 50 hours of climbing, they are usually cold, tired and sick and do not even have the energy to care about the beautiful view around them. Symptoms that they often get include and are not restricted to violent coughing, feeling painful when doing ordinary breathing, feeling unable to eat, and since little oxygen reach their brains, they have low mental capacity, unable think normally and might do unexpected actions. All of these increase the climbers risk to get hurt. Moreover, there are extreme geographical locations that climbers need to go through that are lengthy, rugged, uneven and sometimes climbers even need to climb on smooth rock surfaces and steep cliffs. There are snow patches, snow slashes, snow abysses, snow forlorn near the top of the mountain. In such a dangerous place, a slight slip would be fatal – a faltering climber would easily slip off the cliff and become a shapeless, bloody heap.

Furthermore, mountain climbing on Everest not only risk the climbers’ lives but is also environmentally damaging. Firstly, there are many geographical features that hadn’t been touched by humans for thousands of years. Professional geographers might be able to figure out important geographical data from these features. However, if more and more amateur climbers climb onto Everest without any knowledge of the features, these precious samples might be ruined. Secondly, some climbers might damage the habitats that are crucial to some organisms, causing deaths of species which would eventually leads to the decrease in number or even extinction of animals in the same food chain. The damage of the food chain will cause serious impacts on environment around people living close to Everest, and their food supply.

At the same time, climbing on a mountain with a high altitude is a highly egotistical act. On one hand, the damages brought to the environment is an egotistical act. The climbers and the guides who organised the climbing tour had never thought about how their actions will impact the plants and animals on the mountains, how their actions will be causing difficulties for the local people in Nepal and China to live in such ruined environment. On the other hand, amateur climbers who had been to such dangerous activity are also being egotistical. Some of them might be unaware of the dangerousness of the activity, but they had the chance to research and learn more about it before they went. As most of them didn’t, many of them are underprepared and this directedly results in their accidents on Everest. Their families, their loved ones who were waiting for them to come back, will never see their husband, wives, daddy or mummy returning home. What they would see, instead, would be a body, a jar of bone ashes, or maybe none of the above and just a notice of their death. These climbers are being egotistical, perhaps without realizing it, bringing permanent pain to others who will suffer from it for the rest of their lives.

Again, I hope that mountain climbing on Everest to be banned, since it is dangerous, damaging to the environment and egotistical. In this way, less accidents would be caused, the environment would be better preserved, and less people will be impacted by these activities. Thank you!

Your Faithfully,
Celia