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I can’t imagine having a hobby that involves passing by, and in some cases climbing over, the exposed remains of others who died doing that same activity.

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A good friend of mine is a professional alpinist who focuses only climbing eight-thousanders with no supplementary oxygen. Through him I’ve met others and learned about this whole community. A number of people are as weird and eccentric as us here in computer-nerd circles; one is tempted to armchair-diagnose some as autistic and climbing as their fixation, so something like Green Boots or the death of peers just won’t stop them. (I envy them that their fixation gives them the physique of a Greek god and stories that can impress any listener, so they often manage to be very socially successful in spite of their quirks.)

From another perspective, nobody lives forever. And so long as somebody isn't e.g. leaving behind young children or whatever, what would be better than going out while looking at beautiful scenery doing something that you love? And it's not like it's fatalism or whatever. Everest is now up to a > 99% survival rate, and even the really deadly climbs are becoming more manageable over time. Better weather forecasting, gear, knowledge, etc.

I had a go at Everest and figured that. My last dead ancestor had gone from Alzheimer's which is generally a way worse way to go than a mountain accident. The risks usually quoted aren't as bad as they sound as they are mostly given as deaths/summits but the majority or climbers don't do either - they just turn back, myself included.

Aren't there only a dozen or so mountains above 8000 m? Can you really do that without supplementary oxygen? Amazing.

14 of them. The first person to climb them all did so without supplemental oxygen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Messner

He made the first solo ascent of Mount Everest and, along with Peter Habeler, the first ascent of Everest without supplementary oxygen. He was the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, doing so without supplementary oxygen. Messner was the first to cross Antarctica and Greenland with neither snowmobiles nor dog sleds and also crossed the Gobi Desert alone. He is widely considered to be the greatest mountaineer of all time.

wow, even his hair is interesting

Ok. This is the most interesting man in the world. Literally.

If you're ever in Northern Italy the Messner museum in Kronplatz is absolutely worth a visit.

https://www.messner-mountain-museum.it/en/discover/corones/

Sure you can. Actually true climbers wear at all times a tight choker below 4000m to compensate excess oxygen in the air.

Back in the 90s, I went to see an IMAX film about climbing Everest and at the beginning, I was thinking, “I could do this,” but as it continued my view turned into, “I will never do this. This is insane.”

What’s really scary now is that it’s turned into something where people have to literally stand in line to reach the summit.

If you like hiking and tough, but rewarding, trails, consider the one to the base camp of Everest, or the roundtrip around the Annapurna. I did both and they are truly amazing without the craziness that has become climbing those Mountains. When I reached the basecamp it really felt like being in a weird Venice or Florence, with "tourist groups" and their guides. Crazy stuff.

Especially the Annapurna one, you still climb up to 5+k meters in altitude, and seeing the actual mountain still towering over you is crazy once you realize.

With today tech - cameras, drones - the tragedy would unfold like a reality TV.

Several months ago a woman broke her leg and stuck as a result at 6800m on Pobeda Peak in Russia and died in several days while the whole country was watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbr02F36YdQ

There was a video-stream company that got famous live-streaming a technician who fell when dismounting a condor-egg camera.

... pied piper?...

For context: One climber died and a helicopter crashed trying to rescue her. No one's ever been rescued before at that altitude on that mountain range.

> 6800m on Pobeda Peak in Russia

I thought, “There’s no way a peak in Russia can be that high”, and indeed, you got the unit wrong, this is 3,003 m. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Pobeda_(Sakha)

you've got the wrong peak. 7439m:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jengish_Chokusu

3000m is nothing. Mount Shasta is 4200m and we, just regular guys, walked up to its summit without any experience, etc. in 2 days. People easy do it in 1 day.

Jengish Chokusu is in Kyrgyzstan, not Russia. And during the Soviet era it was part of the Kyrgyz SFSR, not the Russian SFSR. You’d have to be talking about events happening before 1917 (when it was part of the general Russian Empire) for someone writing in 2026 to reasonably describe it as “in Russia”.

> 3000m is nothing

Not (to speak of the other Peak Pobeda) in Yakutia.

From the Meduza story linked earlier in this subthread:

Russian mountain climber Natalia Nagovitsina, who got stranded on Kyrgyzstan’s Pobeda Peak on August 12 after suffering an injury during her descent, has died...

<https://meduza.io/en/news/2025/09/03/stranded-russian-climbe...>

The climber was Russian. The peak, Kyrgyzstani. The name "Pobeda" means "Victory" in Russian. Mountains (and other geographic features) often share names, and specifying which and where can occasionally be confusing.

Tolerance for someone mis-remembering elements of a story helps avoid tedious comment litigation.

Confusing a country that won independence from its colonizer with said colonizer (regardless of whether it was a typical geographical misconception around "Russia" or a mere slipup) is pretty insensitive.

Really, that theme is tired.

The mistake was in all likelihood innocent.

Be that as it may, the highest peak in Russia (and in all of Europe) is Mt. Elbrus, which is 5,642 m. Guess it sucks to be a peak in the 7000-8000 m range in Asia, which would be the highest peak on any other continent, but in Asia, it's just one of many...

Text: https://meduza.io/en/news/2025/09/03/stranded-russian-climbe...

Link at the bottom has previous update

I could absolutely not do this, but "Into Thin Air" (which mentions Green Boots many times) is a great book. Highly recommended.

As a firefighter/EMT I occasionally have to deal with death, and I will even put myself in somewhat dangerous situations (that I've been trained for, and for which I have appropriate PPE) if there's a chance I can save a life.

But putting myself in a situation where the likelihood of dying is quite high for no reason other than to say I did it? No thanks.

Nevertheless I'm glad the family of Mr. Morup is no longer wondering what happened to him.

I mean you do firefighting because you like something about it, maybe the feeling of doing something good. So it should be understandable doing something dangerous for some good internal feeling. Your driving feel good feeling is just different from theirs. The fact you dismissed it to just be "to say they did it" doesn't mean that's how they feel about it. There's ways to be dismissive about being a firefighter too, but they aren't fair.

I do do some things just to say I did them. Or to compete with myself so I can push farther. But for the most part those things have much lower risk of death than climbing Everest. And it's easy for my family to retrieve my body in the unlikely event that I die.

If I ever climbed Everest it would only be to recover some of the bodies or preferably bring down somebody still alive who needs medical attention. I would not consider it "fun" but that's just me.

"The fact you dismissed it to just be "to say they did it" doesn't mean that's how they feel about it"

But they don't do it for other people. They do it, to say they did it. To overcome the challenge, to do what they are good at.

The most other people get out of climbing stories is being entertained (or inspired).

The most people get out of firefighters work is having their lives saved.

This subthread isn't about what is most valuable to the world. It is about what makes someone take risks. One guy's superficial need for adrenaline might still represent a much bigger internal feeling of "I have to do it" than another guys internal feeling of "I like to help others so I do this". Because the firefighter only understands taking risks to do something moral doesn't mean others operate the same way.

I believe firefighters partly also do it for the adrenaline rush.

I also believe there are different views of what this subthread was about.

Best to not look into the firefighter/arsonist overlap either.

I kid, you guys are awesome.

(Also, no firefighter I’ve ever known wonders why the overlap exists, hahah)

In some cases leaving people behind to die as well.

https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-porter-death-k2-norwegia...

A climber who was pivotally involved in the failed rescue efforts for the dead person in this article immediately left on a solo climb of a nearby mountain. He died just over a year later in another climbing incident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Boukreev

From what I read, the 1996 Everest disaster involved two completely separate groups: Adventure Consultants/Mountain Madness, who ascended via the South Route (from Nepal), and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police expedition, who came via the North Route (from Tibet), so if they ever met, it was only at the summit. "Green Boots" was part of the latter group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster#Li...

Appreciate the clarification.

While it was part of the same overall disaster, Boukreev‘s rescue efforts may not have been specifically towards Green Boots.

From what I understand the final location of Green Boots was along the same route that Boukreev took when attempting to rescue climbers? But now I’m less certain — it seems like the furthest Boukreev in reached in attempted rescue was Fischer’s body which was well below Green Boots.

Yeah and also knowing if something happens your team will definitely leave you

The movie Touching the Void is highly recommended.

As for most book-based movies, the book is IMO better.

Documentary or docudrama but yes it's great. Important lessons like focusing only in the next rock.

Not always but in some circumstances it's hard to do much.

Is climbing over something that happens?

For passing by, that says some about the danger of the hobby and much more about the effort of getting the body back. There's lots of common activities where you might pass by a spot someone died while doing it. Notably, driving a car nearly guarantees it.

Or taking a walk. There’s an intersection two blocks from me where a pedestrian was killed in a hit and run accident shortly after I moved to town. The roadside memorial remained in place for nearly two years (I remember thinking that the people who lived in the house at the corner where the memorial was would probably like to remove it, but didn’t want to appear callous).

The worst part is that even though the intersection has been a 4-way stop for over a decade (the additional stop signs added after the hit and run), I’ve twice nearly been struck by drivers blowing the stop sign after I’ve entered the intersection as a pedestrian.

I feel so frustrated about such stuff. Especially when we have the technology to make this not happen.

There aren't any common activities where visible corpses serve to remind you that around 1% of participants don't make it back

There's a pretty stark difference been "someone died in this spot" and them still being there for you to see. Most people don't react nearly as viscerally to hearing that someone died as they do to literally seeing a corpse.

Yeah, that's my point. That it's about the [lack of] burial rather than the actual death.

You do often see flowers put at the site of a death.

The stepping over the dead bothers me little, frankly. As a mountaineer, it's hard to imagine a nicer end than dying at the top of a beautiful mountain. Beats the care home for sure.

What horrifies me is the idea of stepping past people who are alive and dying, because... Meh? Because I paid to go the top, not rescue stragglers? People often say they can barely walk forwards, never mind rescue someone, and it's true. But surely if you have any energy left in you, it should go to saving a life. And if it is so touch and go for you, then don't go.

Do you think if you're in that kind of situation, where you are dying on a beautiful mountain, you would have it in you to appreciate the beauty around you? I was imagining it to be more like a cold, painful death rather than a nice end where you appreciate the mountain air.

I have firsthand experience with this, and yes, that was my last thought. I was young and foolish, and alone in the wilderness during the winter. I drank some bad water and became very sick during a blizzard, and while searching for shelter, I finally became too weak to continue. I was hypothermic, and coherent thoughts were difficult, but my last thoughts were peaceful acceptance, and appreciation of the beauty and power around me. I cocooned up and drifted off, and I'm still here somehow.

Thank you for sharing - I'm glad you lived!

I don't have definitive first-hand experience.

I would speculate that it is one of the less awful ways to go. Mountaineers who had a close brush talk about the struggle to stay awake while awaiting rescue (or before resuming their descent at first light) - because they felt that if they fell asleep, they wouldn't wake up again.

If it's like uncomfortable and cold but unshakeable sleepiness, I can think of worse ways to go.

I mean Everest is so gauche also, only rich morons do it.

Other mountains are available. Most of the mountains in Antarctica are unclimbed.

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