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Hung up on heights
为何越来越多人热衷于登顶珠峰？
We humans like to conquer.
人类喜欢征服的感觉。
For the same reason that soccer players want to hold the World Cup trophy and tennis players crave a Grand Slam win, mountaineers dream of reaching the highest peak on the planet – Mount Qomolangma, which towers about 8,844 meters above sea level.
就像足球运动员想要捧起大力神杯，网球运动员渴望获得大满贯一样，登山者们梦想着登顶这个星球的最高峰 —— 海拔约8844米的珠穆朗玛峰。
"Everybody wants to stand on top of the world," Mirza Ali from Pakistan who had just "conquered" Mount Qomolangma, told the Los Angeles Times.
“每个人都想站在世界之巅，”来自巴基斯坦的米尔扎·阿里刚刚“征服了”珠穆朗玛峰，他在接受《洛杉矶时报》采访时如此表示。
However, this desire to conquer has become so strong that we have begun to travel in the wrong direction.
然而，这种强烈的征服欲也会让我们走上歧途。
During this year's climbing season – from March to May – at least 11 climbers died in the Himalayas, making it one of the worst seasons on record. And the fact that many of the climbers were inexperienced is one of the major factors contributing to the tragedy, according to USA Today.
在今年3月至5月的登山季期间，至少有11名登山者在喜马拉雅山脉遇难，今年也因此成为了历年来最糟糕的登山季之一。据《今日美国》报道，许多登山者缺乏经验是造成悲剧的一大主要因素。
"They don't train very hard. They underestimate Qomolangma," Jangbu Sherpa, who has been working as a guide on Mount Qomolangma since 2006, told NBC News. "There are lots of climbers who just want to check the box so that they can say they've been to the top of the world."
“他们没有经过严格的训练，低估了珠穆朗玛峰，”从2006年起便在珠峰担任向导的扬布·夏尔巴在接受（美国）全国广播公司新闻网采访时表示。“有不少登山者只是想来打个卡，这样他们就能说曾到过世界之巅了。”
This ignorant attitude of climbers also leads to other problems – apart from putting their own lives at risk, of course. According to HuffPost, the mountain's cleaning group collected 12 tons of trash – including food wrappers, and oxygen tanks – left behind this climbing season. This once holy and peaceful corner of the world has, as The Atlantic reporter Margret Grebowics put it, "lost its magic".
除了将自己的生命置于危险境地，登山者们的无视态度也带来了其他问题。据《赫芬顿邮报》报道，在今年的登山季期间，珠峰清洁队在山上清理出了12吨垃圾，包括食品包装袋以及氧气罐等。正如《大西洋月刊》记者玛格丽特·格雷博维奇所言，这处曾经神圣又平静的世界一隅，已经“失去了它的魔力”。
Perhaps what we should do now is restore meaning to the activity itself – real meaning. And for Alison Levine, a US mountaineer who reached the summit of Mount Qomolangma in 2010, the meaning doesn't come with the summit itself, but with everything that led her up to it.
或许我们现在应该做的，便是还原活动本身的真实意义。对于曾在2010年登顶珠峰的美国登山者艾莉森·莱文而言，这件事的意义并不在于登顶本身，而在于引领她向上的一切。
"When I did make it to the summit, what I realized is that standing on top of a mountain doesn't change you and doesn't change the world," Levine told the NPR. "It's really about the journey. The journey is the most important thing on any mountain."
“当我登顶成功时，我意识到立于山巅并不会改变你，或者改变这个世界，”莱文在接受美国国家公共电台采访时表示。“这的确是一段旅程。这段旅程才是登山最重要的事。”
It's true that we humans like to conquer. But the first step of conquering anything is probably to learn to conquer our own greed and ignorance.
的确，人类喜欢征服的感觉。但或许征服任何事物的前提是，先学着征服我们自身的贪婪与无知。
