Everest 2024: Nepal's "GPS Chip" Plan Has Major Problems | Hacker News Reader

Everest 2024: Nepal's "GPS Chip" Plan Has Major Problems

alanarnette.com

45 pointsharambae40 comments

These are the solutions that Alan recommends instead:

1. Require all climbers to have summited 7000 meters or higher before issuing them Everest permits.

2. Require all “guides” to be IFMGA certified or at least have taken climbing, medical and rescue courses at the Khumbu Climbing Center taught by proven, qualified Everest guides

3. Require that every person climbing Everest carry a handheld radio

4. Each team monitor and write down every climber’s (member and support) precise location when above base camp.

5. Establish a central monitoring team at Base Camp and Camp 2 to monitor emergency frequency

6. Position trained search and rescue resources at Base Camp, Camp 2 and on a rotating basis at the South Col during summit pushes

7. Limit foreign permits to 400 qualified members

8. Limit team size to 25 members with 1:1 Sherpa support. BC Staff is additional.

9. Ban any operator for one year if they have a client who is “missing” at the end of the season

Most seem like common sense. Number 2 could lead to economic capture, but is probably worth it. Number 7 is the most difficult; there would have to be a way to distribute work and revenue among the community to make up for the losses. It would probably increase prices, which would help.

Number 9 is the only one I would strike. It's most likely unenforceable (sketchy operators would just change names) and it would only serve to penalize reputable operators because accidents are inevitable. Either way, even just implementing 1 to 6 and 8 would already be tremendous progress.

I took 9 to be missing without a trace rather then missing due to an accident.

Makes sense, thanks

> Climbers have successfully used GPS devices for many years, but they are not 100% reliable. [...] Sometimes, it will send incorrect coordinates because the signal bounces off the mountain walls. Also, they require a clear sky view

Somewhat, but GPS receiver performance has improved greatly in the last 25 years.

Back in the day, you'd put a carefully oriented GPS antenna on the top of your car and still expect to lose signal when going between tall buildings.

These days a backseat car passenger with a metal car roof between them and the sky, paying no attention to the antenna's orientation, can almost always get a fix even in the densest of built up areas. And it's not just wifi or cell tower tracking - it's a proper satellite fix, with the precision to give turn-by-turn navigation instructions in good time.

A mountaineer's personal locator beacon might not get the full benefits (unlike a smartphone in an urban area, they probably won't get the fast fix A-GPS provides) but I'd still expect them to get the high sensitivity and multipath rejection modern receivers provide.

I thought the same, but I was pretty surprised how bad my phone's GPS performance was next to cliffs. Especially altitude was off significantly.

When thinking of turn-by-turn navigation, keep in mind that car navigation will snap your position to roads. For a better comparison, try e.g. Google Maps in pedestrian or bicycle navigation mode. At least in my experience, the perceived "accuracy" drops significantly.

If you have a USA phone, bear in mind most are sold with glonass and beidou and support disabled.

Buy a phone or GPS from elsewhere in the world and you'll get to use all the networks and get much better accuracy.

EU phone, but yeah, good to point out GNSS isn't just GPS anymore. I also agree that the accuracy is insanely good most of the time; I'm just objecting the "accuracy test" using car turn-by-turn navigation :-)

Do you have a source on that? My understanding is that most consumer cellphone GNSS systems today are multi-constellation out of the box. If there is a satellite up there, the phone will use it, no matter which flag is painted on it.

Additionally, phone GPS chipsets are often built into the baseband modem and performance might be limited compared to state of the art (and just price, packaging limitations for antennas, assumption that a phone always uses A-GPS etc).

The dual frequency chipsets used in modern high-end fitness watches & drones have pretty spectacular performance even in incredibly built up areas with high tower blocks or under tree cover (they usually have a barometer as well to help with the altitude problem).

> keep in mind that car navigation will snap your position to roads.

Right. I chose driving as an example because someone navigating a city on foot could conceivably do it with low-precision signals like wifi. They can stop and wait for a better signal, or carefully study the map comparing it to street signs; a fix that puts them on the right block and that only updates once or twice per block is adequate, if not good.

Whereas turn-by-turn navigation is able to tell the driver "take the next right" 3 seconds before the turn - which shows the signal is being tracked precisely and regularly.

> For a better comparison, try e.g. Google Maps in pedestrian or bicycle navigation mode.

If you're into sports, take a look on Strava at people doing things like big city marathons: https://www.strava.com/activities/8078299417 https://www.strava.com/activities/51910242 where of course the positions aren't snapped to roads.

You'll see minor hiccups from time to time - but despite navigating between many tall buildings, you won't see errors of hundreds of miles.

GPS units can also include INS or INS like logic systems to prevent those types of jumping around. It can be difficult to tell from an application output just how processed your "dot" is.

It's actually fairly easy, for things like running GPSes.

You know the track isn't snapped to a map. And you know it's not built into a car, so no odometer or rate gyro.

Then just look at the trace as the sportsperson goes around a corner. Does the trace overshoot, then backtrack? That means the kalman filter is heavily smoothing with momentum. Does it produce a gently rounded corner that goes through a building? That means there's a moving average.

However if the traces display sharp corners when appropriate - then the signal is not being excessively smoothed.

(And I can assure you, even if a GPS watch has enough motion sensing to count steps, the swinging of arms and bouncing of feet mean wrist acceleration is noisy enough you've got no chance of detecting a runner turning a corner)

Right, I was mostly thinking about robustness against transient jumps due to transient multipath reflection as you navigate around an urban environment. If you know that your strapped to a walker/runner, you know that you can't travel 100m in ~3-4 seconds.

Your phone is using other signals, like maps of WiFi ssids to help locate in gps denied areas.

> it's a proper satellite fix, with the precision to give turn-by-turn navigation instructions in good time

That’s not entirely true. Phones do sensor fusion when doing turn by turn navigation. Accelerometer, gyro, and barometer are especially taken into account, but also compass and trilateration via WiFi and cellular sources as well.

Dropped in just to say, no one understands GPS, including 99% of hacks and tech people... Go buy a $5 dongle and stream the feed, its just lat/long repeating maybe sometimes a altitude... but its still very weak and very unreliable... with mobile phones pulling wool to make you all believe its turn by turn. Ok bye.

> Dropped in just to say, no one understands GPS, including 99% of hacks and tech people... Go buy a $5 dongle and stream the feed, its just lat/long repeating maybe sometimes a altitude...

So you’re also one of the 99%! That “feed” isn’t the GPS signal, it’s the output of your cheap device. ;)

There are folks here however who are intimately familiar with gold codes, legendre sequences, Jaffe-Rechtin phase locked loops, RHCP signals, URA vs URE, etc.

Thanks Karen! Was suggesting people learn these concepts through the use of a usb dongle, but turns out you're the dongle.

Google does something pretty clever specifically for urban canyons too: https://blog.research.google/2019/02/using-global-localizati...

In my (limited, I don't often use my Pixel) experience, it does work much better than my iPhone's GPS, which often wants me to use the camera (in Apple and Google Maps) for urban canyon navigation using visual sensor fusion.

If you don't have other sensor data, like cell tower and Wifi, then GPS still has a pretty poor performance. Another problem of GPS is altitude. GPS is not really designed to give a good altitude reading, especially when you are in the mountains where only get satellites readings from over your head and don't have readings from the satellites on the horizon.

But in the mountains, altitude is also a very important information. I was up at basecamp in Nepal (south side) and Tibet (east and north side). The basecamp in Nepal is in a very tight spot. Bouncing signals is there a problem. Even radio is a problem.

BTW: I commute daily with train, here in Germany. I play Pokemon and I have problems getting a GPS fix with the latest iPhone when I'm not directly at the window.

This used to be true many years ago, but today, even cheap phone receivers use a very high number of satellites (so geometry is usually more favorable) and usually also contain a barometer, which can provide additional disambiguation via sensor fusion.

> especially when you are in the mountains where only get satellites readings from over your head

That might be true in a very steep ravine, but it's more of a concern for reaching communications satellites (of which there are much fewer or sometimes only one, depending on the system). Today, not getting a GNSS fix due to terrain is increasingly unlikely for the reasons mentioned above.

Also, in a hiking/mountaineering context, it's probably fair to assume that any GPS user will be located on the surface of the earth, so a precise lat/long fix is really all you need; you can determine the height using elevation models, which are pretty accurate these days.

> I commute daily with train, here in Germany

Some German trains were notorious for having bad cell signal due to metal-coated windows (applied for reflecting solar radiation). Try the same thing with an (open) car window and I bet you'll get excellent signal.

Some German trains were notorious for having bad cell signal due to metal-coated windows (applied for reflecting solar radiation).

It's the first thing I thought of, and it's why we had ceramic tinting put on our vehicle windows instead of conventional tinting (which in many cases, AIUI, has radio-blocking metal in it).

But in the mountains, altitude is also a very important information.

But wouldn't one carry a barometric altimeter in those cases? I mean, my iPhone and Apple Watch both have barometric altimeters, and those are consumer devices not designed to get you up a 7000m mountain.

Now, granted, that doesn't help the device that's "sewn into a jacket", but as a sibling commenter mentions, in a search elevation models could be used. Or if they can stick an altimeter in my watch, maybe there's one in this mysterious, unnamed device.

The basecamp in Nepal is in a very tight spot. Bouncing signals is there a problem.

I wonder how much of a difference the newer dual-frequency GPS receivers make. It makes a difference on my Apple Watch Ultra versus an older Garmin when running around in the woods, but I'm no mountaineer.

Most anyone who climbs Everest knows their approximate altitude based on certain landmarks (waypoints) that are very well known. The most obvious of which are the camps (1 through 4) but there are other landmarks that are well known.

If you're going off the main route however, then it's a bit of a different story.

Knowing your altitude on the main route is fairly easy. Those routes are entirely marked (roped) and have obvious geological features that mountaineers have memorized. The four camps en-route are also at the same altitude every year.

Getting outside information about your altitude certainly is important if you're doing a non-standard route or if you stray from the fixed ropes somehow.

It's naive to suggest limiting the number of permits given per year. On one hand it's a major source of income to both the Nepali government and the local economy. On the other hand, the folks with the most money will still get the permits and the mountaineers will not, thereby increasing the chance of accidents.

Arguably, better safety will increase the numbers of people wanting to climb Everest, and thereby increase revenues.

I’d bet the opposite, personally. I think the risk is an important part of it, and clearly it’s not putting enough people off. There’s probably an, erm, ‘sweet’ spot where there are enough deaths to make it feel spectacularly dangerous, but not so many you think it’s going to happen to _you_.

Alan Arnette is a well recognized mountaineer for years. He summited Everest, K2, and all the 7 summits. He is well recognized and connected within the community for years. He knows how it works.

Did you also read the last sentences of his blog post?

There is certainly a sweet spot where they can increase the price of permits and still get more money in total.

If an economist would do some good in the world, they could help the Nepali government find this sweet spot. It would improve Nepalis'livelihood and save some lives.

I'd be very surprised if the "GPS chip" was actually RECCO.

RECCO has one pretty specific use case: Being hit by an avalanche while not carrying an active avalanche beacon.

This is pretty much only useful for recreational skiers straying off-slope: If you get hit by an avalance in the backcountry, chances are that anybody noticing the avalance and capable of digging you out in time, i.e. within minutes, will be your group members (hopefully you were following precautions, i.e. skiing with a lot of distance between each other on avalanche-prone slopes and are carrying shovels!)

In any case, there will most likely not be anybody carrying the heavy active searching device needed for RECCO. Active avalance beacons can be switched to homing mode by non-buried group memebers; that's why skiing and mountain guides I've spoken to heavily recommend carrying these when planning to go off-slope.

RECCO's range is 80 meters only in free-space (20 meters under packed snow), so it's not even remotely useful to locate lost hikers/climbers.

Or get a Apple TAG no?

With a range of 10 meters probably not so much. Great for when you lose your car keys in basecamp, though!

I am (an amateur) sailor and every time I have a new crew I go through the same set of safety rules with them including explanation of what to do in case somebody falls overboard.

We will usually also go through a training exercise (throw a weighted fender into water while underway) to cement the lesson a bit and for people to understand what they can expect in a real situation.

Probably the most important task is that of the person who needs to keep pointing with the finger at the man over board and keep constant focus on not loosing them from their sight.

On a small yacht and with any waves around you, it is almost impossible to find a bobbing human head unless somebody is constantly focused on tracking the victim. Trust me, once you loose the sight of the head that only shows in your view intermittently, it can be almost impossible to find them again.

I am not a mountaineer, but I have red quite a bunch of mountain stories and the same theme repeats all over again -- people who die even though they could be easily rescued if just anybody knew where they got stuck. People who got caught by a blizzard and got disoriented even as close as a hundred feet from the basecamp. Rescuers going on a long and dangerous rescue mission even if the victim was almost at the door step. Rescuers risking their lives even though the victim have fallen from a great height and there was essentially no chance for a positive outcome. Rescuers waiting for a long time not knowing what to do and trying to weigh the risks of going out vs the risk to their friend who did not report to the base at the planned time.

A simple GPS device could cut so much of that drama just like a simple mobile phone cut a lot of drama from meeting with somebody. Who still remembers the time when you had to meet with the other person at the prearranged time and if they were not there you faced a sometimes difficult decision to stay and wait because they might be late or go back home?

As to the GPS receiver inaccuracy, even with inaccurate results the signal can be useful. You can usually tell if the signal is or is not accurate by how erratic it is. If it follows the planned path it probably is accurate. If suddenly strays off the planned path and then stays in one place while still transmitting -- that is very likely a sign of accident. Even if you don't have 100% certainty in the signal, rather than search everywhere for the victim and risk rescuers' lives, you can just go where the signal points and there is good likelihood you will not come emptyhanded.

Interesting article, be helpful if there was a breakdown of why the author thinks people are dying. Seems from the article like there are three problems:

- SAR teams knowing where people are - SPOT/inReach, PLB, Recco (at a push)

- SAR teams knowing that someone is in trouble: SPOT/inReach, PLB, VHF, Satphone

- Members of a climbing team knowing where each other are: SPOT/inReach, VHF, Satphone, Meshtastic (or something of that style)

I imagine that SAR is really really hard on Everest even if you do know where the casualty is so knowing where other members of a climbing team are might be the most important one?

You're right on what some of the major problems are but, there are no SAR teams on Everest. Your SAR team is the expedition outfit you signed up with. Many are under-manned and under-equipped but even the best ones won't be able to facilitate a rescue much of the time (due to weather, altitude and manpower issues). The climbers all know this.

Many of the bigger outfits do co-operate on rescues where they can, but aside from that there is no official rescue organization.

RECCO is better than nothing, but it has very minimal value for saving anyone, it's helpful used for body recovery (as mentioned in the article, recco is just a pasisive reflector antenna) - it requires active scanning from SAR team, which takes time and is prone to environment conditions.

I thought that having gps sat locator (like inReach etc) was already obligatory in Himalaya, but maybe it's just a good practice, and not mandatory.

The author is mistaken in the article. Alan says in the article:

Gurung told CNN that the chips are manufactured in “a European country” but did not specify where or by which company and cost $10-15 apiece for each chip. He said that they would be sewn into the climber’s jacket. Once the climber returns, the chip will be removed, given back to the government, and saved for the next person.”

No where in the CNN link does it say the chip costs $10-15 a piece. It says:

He explains that climbers will pay $10-15 apiece for the chips, which will be sewn into their jackets. Once the climber returns, the chip will be removed, given back to the government, and saved for the next person.

So the $10-15 is a rental price, not a per unit price. Which means it could be some of the more expensive solutions he ruled out due to cost.

Good catch. There's still something fishy though. I mean, does anyone here know of an an unpowered, waterproof GPS "chip" that can be "sewn" into a jacket?

Also, charging a $10-$15 mandatory rental fee is weird given that an Everest climbing permit is already in the neighbourhood of $15k (up from ~$10k last year). I can't see the Nepali Government bothering with a rental fee of that magnitude, so maybe it is a cheap Recco-like device (ie *not GPS) and the fee is more of a deposit? So many questions.

This mistake aside, I can't say enough about Alan and his blog/podcast for those interested in the topic. Even non-climbers.

It would be useful if the Everest routes had active base stations all the way up and down the route. They could form a mesh network and precisely locate every climbers on the way up and down the mountain. Put them in place at the beginning of each season.

I'm aware that this dramatically changes the 'adventure' of climbing Everest but I don't care because if it saves one Sherpa or guide then I think it will have served its purpose

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