Mount Lunacy

Take a good long look at the photo accompanying this story, and then tell me the human species is long for this world. That's a queue of people lined up to get to the top of Mt. Everest. That's a queue of people lined up as if  Everest were, I don't know, a ride at Cedar Point or a hit Broadway show.

Which it might be now that Nepal is doling out permits to climb Everest to just about anyone with a pulse and the ability to pass the old chewing gum/walking test.

The result is this sort of logjam at the top, as climbers patiently wait their turn to stand on the highest point on Earth. Mind you, this is not a sidewalk they're standing on. This is a knife's-edge ridge 29,000 feet in the sky, where oxygen is as rare as common sense and the trail is littered with human popsicles, corpses left there after falling or running out of air or being caught out in storms that come howling out of nowhere in an eyeblink.

There are so many corpses up there now, the climbers Everest hasn't killed yet are literally stepping over them. Eleven of them are fresh corpses who have died in this season alone.

It's a damn cemetery up there, in other words. Think about that for a second.

"Are these people crazy?" you're asking now, having thought about it.

An excellent question. Here's the easy answer: Why, yes. Yes, they are.

This would include Nepalese officials, who see no problem with people queuing up in long lines to become Everest's next victims. Desperate for the money, they've issued north of 300 permits so far this year, at $11,000 a pop.

Some of them have gone to people who've actually climbed a real mountain before. The rest have gone to thrill-seekers and bucket-listers who belong on a knife's-edge ridge 29,000 feet in the sky the way an El Camino belongs in the Indianapolis 500.

I don't know how Nepal justifies this. I do know how it should sell it, however.

Wanna Die On Everest? Here's Your Chance!

That.

And Don't Forget The T-Shirt: I Kicked The Bucket (List) On Everest!

Also that.

The hell of it is, when you're lining up to reach the summit of Everest the way you'd line up at Starbucks, how much of an I Kicked The Bucket (List) deal is it? Thousands of just folks have reached the summit now, decades after Hillary and Tenzing did it. Climbers who've survived this season say it's a literal traffic jam up there now. Which suggests it's about as much an accomplishment these days as making a successful trip to Lowe's.

Yet every Tom, Dick and Harry is still doing it. And Nepal is still blithely issuing permits to them. And the human popsicles above Camp Four keep blooming like flowers in an English garden.

Oh, yes. These people are crazy. Crazy as bedbugs.