Nepal bans solo climbers from Mount Everest
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Plus, I would hate to think that you would become just a nameless waypoint or turning marker on the way to the summit, much as poor 'Green Boots' and others have become. (though I believe 'Green Boots' has been removed now?)
EDIT: It appears that 'Green Boots' is still on the mountain, and has not been removed as previously thought. [0]
[0] - http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2017/05/27/everest-2017-week...
This is, at least, my anedoctal experience. I go hiking recreational level hills with (American) friends frequently and it always annoys me how they just want to get to the top as soon as possible and then come back down just as quickly. I instead frequently stop on my way to look around and admire the view (and not just at officially sanctioned "lookout points") and this is something they never have any inclination on doing.
The americans writing articles for the AAC journal or evening sends or whatnot are not peak-baggers.
conversely, the grade-seekers of 8a.nu are primarily european.
Peoples individual risk tolerance varies, but we all tend to have a tendency to see a reduced risk as a reason to push things further.
This gives rise to the situation where if we make changes that are perceived as adding more safety than it actually does, we even risk actually causing more injury than we prevent
Hopefully this will save the lives of a few Sherpas (who, btw, are an ethnic group; it's not a job title). They're inevitably tasked with attempting to save rich Western idiots doing stupid stuff like climb Everest without support.
I'd just add my personal experience on the mountain: it's hard to describe how brutal Everest is. You're so cold and so tired and so out of it, 99% of us (those without natural-born mountaineering gifts) being up there unaided is just a recipe for disaster.
Next I'd like to see the Nepalese government double the Everest permit fee (currently $11,000) and pass $$ onto Sherpas.
Doubt it will happen, but this is at least a small victory.
There has to be a better solution to the problem mentioned in the article.
[1] https://www.outsideonline.com/2187266/kilian-jornet-summits-...
Nepal have every right to ban people from doing pointless, stupid things on their mountain. Jornet's good friend Ueli Steck died earlier this year. He was solo climbing Nuptse without fixed protection, supplemental oxygen or even ice axes. If Jornet has not learned from this senseless tragedy, then Nepal has no obligation to entertain him.
If you want to kill yourself, do it at sea level.
If you're determined to climb into the death zone without supplemental oxygen, you could still carry a small cylinder as a bailout option. Hell, if you want to make the climb really challenging, you could carry ten oxygen cylinders and a Piñata.
More to the point, you could just not climb Everest. Other than the altitude, there's nothing particularly interesting about the climb. The Nürburgring was the most interesting and challenging course in the Formula 1 world championship, but the sport abandoned it in 1976 because it couldn't be made safe. The drivers agreed that no race track was worth creating widows and orphans for.
Minor quibble: you mean aid climbing, here. post-1960ish, "french-free" or hangdog ascents are considered bad form for trad, and using your gear to take your weight is an ethics violation at some level.
>The drivers agreed that no race track was worth creating widows and orphans for.
Motorcyclists, of course, continue to use the Isle of Man TT course despite the deaths of 255 people to date.
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8591724
Edit: Why downvote this? Is there any evidence Kilian submitted beyond his word?
https://iancorless.org/2017/12/10/kilian-jornet-everest-spee...
(I didn't downvote you, but it's worth doing a bit more research before making a statement like that.)
Just taking a wild stab at it, avoiding embarrassment and maintaining his reputation. I know literally nothing about him, but I presume he's every bit as human as the rest of us.
I'm absolutely not trying to weigh in either way - again, I know literally nothing about him. But also I don't think past accomplishment can be used as such handy proof of subsequent accomplishments.
He's failed many times on the, "Summits of My Life" peaks. It's Alpinism! Failure is part of the game. This wasn't even his first time trying Everest. He's clearly not an egotistical guy.
> but I presume he's every bit as human as the rest of us.
I'd do some research, well worth it. They guy isn't human.
That he has been to the summit.
Just for the sake of argument, the reason is pretty obvious: sponsor pressure. You think Salomon is ponying up for him to get to 28,500 and then turn back?
Also, didn’t Kilian get DQed for cutting switchbacks in a race after being told repeatedly to knock it off? I know he’s a beast and GOAT but he’s still human.
The guy is a living legend in his 20's. He's already failed on Everest before, in 2016. What pressure do you think Salomon has on Jornet? Salomon is a 700 million dollar a year in revenue company, whose parent company has yearly revenue in the billions. They got the scratch and Jornet is Salomon's top athlete, no question about it. I don't even think Salomon was the sole, or even main sponsor. His blog lists Mercedes Benz a b.s. luxury brand that seems to be what's needed as the catalyst for large expeditions into the Himalayas that has nothing to do with mountaineering.
The big money in sponsorship (as an athlete) is in racing, not mountaineering. But Jornet has literally won every race there is to win! Salomon is sponsoring Jornet even though he doesn't do what a sponsors runner is supposed to do - because he's his own weather system of getting eyeballs interested in the brands that sponsor him - he doesn't need UTMB, or any other ultra race anymore. He can compete in them for fun, when he wants to.
Take it from me, there's little if no money in setting FKTs, and only the Jornet's of the world could pull it off. His sponsors aren't pushing for him to do this stuff, he's telling his sponsors what he's doing, the sponsors put up the hype, and they all make a lot of money.
> Also, didn’t Kilian get DQed for cutting switchbacks in a race after being told repeatedly to knock it off?
No, he was not disqualified:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyRew7lr5eE
There's little to no money in being a professional ultra runner. A little little better in Europe, but the only dude I know that makes a living as a pro ultra runner is so injured, he can't even run. It honestly doesn't matter: he has a huge social media following, and he gets people excited for the brand. He makes a living not running (he doesn't coach, he doesn't put on his own race, nothing). He makes pennies to Jornet's dollars.
Believe me, Jornet's doing fine, and wouldn't need to fake a summit bid. Remember too, he summited twice in that one trip.
If I were in charge (I never will be), my first inclination would be to not restrict high risk climbing. But then I wouldn't be able to shake the feeling that a hands off approach would be that simple. I'd want to understand the drawbacks of people dying on the mountain. I'd be concerned with being responsible for rescue costs, being vilified for not making rescue attempts, the cost of medical treatments, the lives lost in attempting to make rescues, any correlations between deaths & the number of climbing attempts made (is it scaring people away, attracting even more, etc.), how the press coverage affects Nepal's public image, and so on. In the end, banning high risk climbing might simply be a good & conservative decision.
It's two distinct groups. If there is overlap there'll likely be ideas like fining someone after a rescue unless they have insurance, & then leaving it up to insurance companies to decide about solo climber coverage
Same could be said here. If there is a specific financial bidder you’re trying to solve, then create a focused law that specifically aims to resolve the point at hand. I really hate these broad-stroke lazy regulations. I’d like to think professional lawmakers would be experts at this.
I think that would be a giant step towards more focused laws, and certainly towards more honestly worded laws, and in many cases it may well be that this would lead a court to direct the legislative to find a different solution or risk having the law struck down.
A large problem with overly broad laws today is simply that legislatives can get away with passing poorly thought out laws and misleading laws because there is no real consequence to it: the judicial system is forced to try to make the best of it if the laws are ridiculous or over-broad, and can't even go "hold on, this law is saying something completely different than what you pretended it was for when you convinced people to vote for it".
You posit a valuable and worthwhile hypothesis. I would appreciate it if you could show conclusive evidence that any solo climber of Everest who died requested as you claim that "government go search" when they went missing. Thank you.
"Into Thin Air" by John Krakauer was the first book to critically explore the "Death Zone" and the state of mountaineering on Everest generally- It was written in 1997, but is just as relevant now.
"Dark Shadows Falling" by Joe Simpson is another commentary on the state of mountaineering on Everest in 1997. Simpson was famously left for dead on a high altitude climb (described in "Touching The Void"), so he brings a keen insight into the morals of high-altitude climbing from the point of view of the "one that was left behind".
The authenticity of emotion JK spills onto the pages of this book, regardless of how well or otherwise it portrays certain people, including himself is just moving.
Here’s a man clearly traumatised by this most harrowing sequence of events and when begged by his editors to “sleep on it” for a few months before he writes anything he responds with a “no. I dont want time to blunt my recollection.”
At the beginning of the book the highlights an exchange he had with his wife at the airport as he departs to Kathmandu, the background being the relationship was severely strained by his obsession with climbing.
He says “Don’t be melodramatic, I’m not gonna die”.
I got curious and read a wikipedia article about the book; from the summary, I don't see any special "morals" about the incident: one mountaineer had a reason to believe another one dead and saved himself, without knowingly leaving anyone behind. Is wikipedia summary incorrect?
On the other hand, he stayed at their basecamp for a prolonged time (if I remember it correctly), which in the end helped Joe, who crawled back there through the glacier with his broken bones and almost dead from dehydration. So he still somehow believed in the miracle that happened.
which serious alpinists no longer do much on everest? of course its not a climb for mountaineers trying to put up a new route/make news due to the fact its the most climbed 8ker but i can think of 3 big names still guiding it regularly and conrad anker who may be the "most famous" mountaineer summited in 2012 according to his wiki. i could see honnold trying to summit everest in the next few years as well.
the long and short of it is that Everest is not where The Hard Stuff Up High is. That's K2, Meru, Annapurna, Cerro Torre... Honnold is not really much of an alpinist, and I doubt he'll ever do Everest ... but he did just spend a month crushing in Antarctica.
(guided) mountaineering and alpinism are very different beasts, and Everest is a guided mountain (now). Fixed ropes, O2, guides, lines, litter. Judging by the last few years of trip reports in the AAC journal, the people who want to rack up and stomp off into the mountains alone or with one or two partners are going elsewhere.
When Scott Fischer was stricken, his friend Anatoli Boukreev climbed up to him with oxygen. Same with Francys Arsentiev, her husband Sergei went back for her and died. On K2, Ger McDonnell attempted a solo rescue of three incapacitated Korean climbers. It isn't like there's a strike force of Reinhold Messner clones waiting at Base Camp ready to run up and pluck tourists off the mountain.
Edit: Hell, rescue below 7000m or 2000m isn't guaranteed. Back in 2009 one of my friends turned around on Aconagua just before the summit due to weather. During her descent she passed an ascending party. That group got disoriented and trapped by the storm. By the time rescuers reach them four days later two climbers were dead or dying.
theres a reason people are left for dead and walk back to camps in the middle of the night (beck weathers is the de facto example) and its because they are so incredibly competent and prepared that they are able to survive but at extreme costs to themselves and those around
north col is tibet
If an idiot wants to do something stupid, why interfere with natural selection?
And why waste money looking for them?
As far as why waste money.. if you are asking that question in earnest there’s probably not a rationale that could convince you as to why. So I’ll abstain.
It's not about reducing the crowds; it's about reducing the risk that solo climbers pose to the crowds.
But rich priveleged people have both the means to do stupid shit and willingly/callously put other people's lives at risk when their stupidity causes an oops moment.
It's such an extreme environment. You can't really rescue people who are in trouble. At best, with multiple climbers, you can have someone else tell you that you shouldn't proceed, which might save your life.
But if someone is already in trouble, you can't really help out, or you will die too. Sure, if you have an extra energy bar, you can give that to your buddy, but that's about it.
The Times just had an interesting feature on Everest body recovery: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everes...
Although the main theme of the article is about the recovery of a body from near the summit, it has background information on when climbs can take place, and how the route to the summit is established every year.
IMO, it's a worthwhile read!
> Delsalle used a virtually standard version of the Eurocopter AS350 Squirrel B3, only removing unnecessary elements, such as passenger seats, to reduce the standard weight by 120 kg (265 lb) and thus extend the 1-hour fuel range.
And in any case, I believe the user you responded to was talking about rescues, not removing corpses.
Passenger jets are fine up there because they haul ass, often north of Mach 0.7-0.8, and push as much of the thin air as possible over the wing. (One of the cool things about commercial air travel is that most people don’t realize they’re flying at transonic speeds, but you’ll occasionally see evidence of it in flight.) It doesn’t take much slowing down for a passenger jet to start descending, and ultimately stall, at cruising altitude. The flight envelope at Everest altitude is much smaller than you’d expect.
For a helicopter, you’d need to replicate that set of circumstances, but with wings rotating above you instead. One has to worry about other conditions, too: in the '70s, when Boulet set the helicopter altitude record above 40,000, the engine flamed out on account of how cold it was and wouldn’t restart. High altitude helicopters are a very difficult design problem, and there isn’t much economic demand to solve it.
And regarding the "coward" part, surely there must be some ways more productive to society by which they can demonstrate their bravery...
This is gone crazy. At least have a written note that forbids anyone from saving their life if it comes to it. They put their own life and the rescuers' lives at risk.
Everytime someone proudly says 'i climbed the Everest ' oh cool, I immediately think, who is the sherpa? They get my praise. Not some rich, over priveleged dude who thinks the rest of the world has to bend to their will for whatever sordid privileged game they are interested in playing.
So, essentially, I agree, I just think this is the proper way for Nepal to go about de-prioritizing this particular problem. :)
If it's for Instagram selfie pleasure I have better ideas for these people.