Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies [2010]
godheadv.blogspot.co.uk
godheadv.blogspot.co.uk
This is well portrayed in the Discovery documentary Everest, which shows a group of people attempting to get to the summit. The mountain is so full of people that are queues of people waiting in line while inexperienced climbers ahead move slowly through the bottle necks (narrow ledges and ladders, etc).
The documentary also portrays the death of climber David Sharp [1] who was left to die up in the mountain. In the documentary, it is shown that he was found during descent in a very bad condition. There is some controversy if this is true and whether he was actually found on the ascent instead. If he was found during the descent, leaving him might be considered acceptable since the party who found him would have been exhausted, low on oxygen and the daylight fading fast.
But if the situation is (as some have suggested, and the Wikipedia article says) that he was actually found on ascent and left to die while going for the summit instead, it is very morally questionable thing to do. Going to the summit, which is essentially only a tourist attraction at this point, instead of attempting to save a man's life is something that I might never comprehend. Even if the chances of saving that man were slim, not attempting the rescue is questionable.
As far as the dangers go, keep in mind that many of the lives claimed by Everest were not "rich idiots." Rob Hall was an experienced guide known for excellent judgment until he perished in the 1996 disaster. Experience helps a lot but there are always things left to chance, always decision points with ambiguous outcomes that can only be resolved in hindsight.
I won't weigh in on the morality of leaving stranded climbers on the mountain other than to provide a little bit of context: climbers know going in that rescue above high camp borders on impossibility. Any responsible outfitter sets an expectation that beyond your climbing partners, you are on your own. There are many climbers who will help others at great personal expense (see: 1996 storm where many gave up their summit attempts to do so). But you get one shot at the summit, and most climbers go in with an awareness that unless their rescue seems surprisingly achievable, they will be passed over by other climbers, either heading towards or returning from the summit. Again, not weighing in on the ethics of that; just trying to provide context for it.
Calling those climbers "rich idiots" is unnecessary, and hugely inaccurate. Nearly all guided Everest expeditions require previous high-peak mountaineering experience to join the expedition, in places such as Aconcagua and Denali [1][2][3]. Technical familiarity with crampons, ice-axe, etc' is a must, and a high level of fitness is required.
People who join those expeditions are not "rich idiots" who think they are going on a cruise. They are amateur climbers with money, who are interested in broadening their climbing experience and achieving their personal goals.
Guiding companies provide a relatively safe opportunity for those climbers to achieve this, as this is something they cannot do by themselves.
I also wouldn't be so quick to pass moral judgments on things that happen 8000+ meters above sea level, in conditions of extreme fatigue, after several weeks of hiking/climbing. What you think you would do while sitting on a chair in front of your computer is not necessarily what you would've done were you actually there.
I recommend reading something like Into thin Air [4] to get a better perspective on what happens on those climbs.
[1] http://www.alpineascents.com/everest.asp [2] http://www.rmiguides.com/himalaya/everest/ [3] http://www.adventureconsultants.com/adventure/FAQEverest/ [4] http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/038...
> Calling those climbers "rich idiots" is unnecessary, and hugely inaccurate. Nearly all guided Everest expeditions require previous high-peak mountaineering experience to join the expedition, in places such as Aconcagua and Denali [1][2][3]. Technical familiarity with crampons, ice-axe, etc' is a must, and a high level of fitness is required.
I agree that it's a bit of an exaggeration and most expedition organizers are responsible and take preparations seriously and require their participants to be in good health and fine physical fitness.
And then there are the organizers that aren't. In the Discovery documentary, there was one particular group of Chinese climbers who were practically pulled up the hill with ropes by their sherpas.
Even the group who were followed in that documentary, from an organizer with a good reputation, led by a well known mountaineer had some members whose physical condition was a bit questionable. There was a motorcycle accident victim who could barely keep up with the climbers at the lower camps and in the end refused to turn back when told so by the expedition leader, putting himself and his sherpas at peril. But most of that group were fine climbers with proper preparations.
I do understand that judgment doesn't quite work well at 8000+ meters, even with supplemental oxygen. I do not want to make moral judgments about the case above, but I do want to raise a discussion about the subject.
It's not just about danger. In addition to the element of challenge and personal achievement that a few have alluded to, mountaineering provides one of the most beautiful and serene experiences imaginable.
Have you ever attempted a physical feat as awe-inspiring as this? http://photos.freerobby.com/Adventures/Denali/i-XCFxjcs/0/X3...
Have you ever appreciated the vastness of nature as much as standing beneath seracs as big as buildings? http://photos.freerobby.com/Adventures/Denali/i-2QddZdv/1/X3...
Have you ever climbed alongside peaks so beautiful that they look surreal? http://photos.freerobby.com/Adventures/Denali/i-ZbZFvzL/0/X3...
Have you ever walked on a receding glacier that has been there for millions of years? http://photos.freerobby.com/Adventures/Denali/i-pStmFNs/0/X3...
Have you ever succeeded at a physical feat that looks less than possible? http://photos.freerobby.com/Adventures/Denali/i-tQ5cg7v/1/X3...
Have you ever woken up in the morning, gone outside your tent, and looked down at the clouds? http://photos.freerobby.com/Adventures/Denali/i-hgC65Lv/1/X3...
I can only imagine how awesome these things would feel, how beautiful these scenes would be, on a mountain the size of Everest, especially when you consider the beauty of the Himalayan ranges around it.
There are as many good reasons to climb mountains as there are bad ones. Most people have vices. Most people take risks. Mine have been extremely rewarding.
http://photos.freerobby.com/Adventures/Denali/i-XCFxjcs/0/X3...
I guess my "Coke and Krispy Kremes Futurama Marathon" doesn't qualify...
It still stands out as one of the most personally rewarding things I've ever done.
Some people are content, I guess, with experiencing the world behind a computer or TV screen.
All I can say is that I am not happy with that. It makes me feel ... blunt, dull, glassy. Half-alive. I have to go out and see things, I have to try to do difficult things occasionally, or I'm not happy.
I've been working on my business, spending most of my time behind a computer, for the last few years. I just started training this year to get back into mountaineering shape, joined Sierra Mountaineering Club (http://www.sierramountaineeringgroup.org/), and replacing my aging gear.
I need this as much as someone needs social time, or time alone, or time on a hobby. It is nutrition for my soul.
They have promised each other that if one is injured or cannot continue and if they are past a point of no return, the other will not only leave the friend there to die - but also take his oxygen tank. In a very surreal, inexplicable and ironic way that's the beauty of human nature. I would not consider the risk viable myself but it amazes me how a person who is staring into the black abyss of the possibility of death would encourage their friend to let them die alone.
Their perspective changed my attitude toward Everest climbers from "idiots" to people who have true character - certainly more than I do behind my little computer screen here.
And you'd be surprised how one friend might die bitter and full of rage for the other actually going on with this, and the other might live to only be full of regret for the BS inspired-by-movies move he did.
I do hope they don't have children / spouses / parents they will leave behind in case of something bad happens, otherwise I definitely would call them idiots. No matter how 'your loved ones support you in your decision' ; that turns out to be mostly bullshit when they are dead and you are left behind (from experience in a few of these cases; not mountain climbing but other extreme sports). Very selfish indeed. Not really worth much or deserving of any respect. Why not do something worthwhile like help wounded in a warzone, at least then your risk makes some sense?
No they don't - I definitely wouldn't respect them if they took a risk like that.
But I thought it could use a repost, 3 years later, as many ma not have seen it, and it was quite interesting.
It adds nothing to the sum of human achievements. It's hardly a personal triumph. If you want to get very fit - a worthy goal - there are plenty of other ways to do that. It's also selfish, expensive and dangerous, for you and others.
Its a grind game for stats like MMORPGs, a real physical grind.
For example, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2152659/I-strong-fee... lists 'overweight French journalist – a small woman weighing around 80kg, who had used her entire supply of oxygen before she'd reached any height at all, and an American of Turkish origin who was carrying his bicycle with him because it had always been his dream to take it to the summit and insisted on fulfilling that dream at whatever cost'.
http://failuremag.com/feature/article/into_sin_air/ includes "Since we’ve decided to measure everything on the planet against Everest there’s a group of people that feel incomplete without having climbed it. Consequently the majority of the people that go there aren’t seasoned mountaineers. Many of them have no interest in climbing any mountain other than Everest."
I can easily find other references if you wish.
I don't believe there are good numbers for the amount of experience that people who climb Everest have, compared to (say) K-2 or Annapurna, both of which are more fatal than Everest, or Cho Oyu, considered the easiest of the 8,000+ meter mountains.
But that suggests you might also not have a strong basis for your statement.
On the other hand I do agree that you have a sound theoretical argument that a famous summit like Everest is going to attract proportionally more crackpots than Cho Oyu.
I was thoroughly unimpressed by the Mail story and its implications. Here's a picture of about 100-200 climbers. Here's an explanation of why I think a whopping 2 of them don't belong there, although that's not very impressive. And here's a past glamour pic of two climbers who died but I very carefully avoid identifying the dead ones as being unqualified, which is bizarre because if they were unqualified it would certainly fit the predetermined conclusion of the article. So what the Mail implied was most of the climbers are noobs who die, but the facts of what it actually reported were very few climbers are unqualified or weirdos and deaths don't seem to correlate with qualification or lack thereof, so there really isn't much of a story. Just profiteering off tragedy.
I don't think anything can be learned from infotainment. Actual stats from reputable sources would be informative. Linkbait, eh, not so much.
But honestly, it isn't that hard to find people who weren't mountaineers who decided to climb Everest. In http://reachingbeyondtheclouds.com/?page_id=18 , "I became drawn to climb that mountain: the beauty, the challenge. Please realize that at the time I had climbed only Mt. Kilimanjaro and was no mountaineer." Due to medical reasons, "I had do it as soon as possible. ... I had to climb as many mountains as I could in a short amount of time." She started training in 2006 and was at the top of Everest on 2010. She only lists a few mountains that she summited before then.
http://mirandaluby.writersresidence.com/samples/on-top-of-th... describes someone whose "first ascent, up [Kilimanjaro], happened purely on a whim." Some time later, after experience 'backpacking at a high altitude for weeks', Simon "decided to give Aconcagua a go to see if I would get sick again", and then going through the tallest peaks for each continent. "Between expeditions, he kept his day job as an anaesthetist, and outside of work hours trained by running and riding" .. that is, not by climbing a large number of other mountains.
http://www.avagacser.com/ViewContent.aspx?mode=v&mediaID=23 describes Medvetz who, a year after a near fatal motorcycle accident which left him temporarily wheelchair bound "That's when I just decided ... I'm gonna climb Everest." "I lived in the Himalayas for about six months in villages and all around the Everest region," Medvetz explains. "I climbed all the smaller peaks around Everest, just training and preparing for it." I don't see evidence that he climbed even a hundred challenging mountains before trying Everest.
As it turns out, the group he went with was being filmed for the Discovery Channel. That, combined with other factors, let him to start a foundation to help wounded veterans do things like climb Everest. One of these in the near future is at http://theheroesproject.org/2013/11/sgt-thomas-charles-linvi... . I see no evidence that Linville has any mountaineering experience.
I found these with very little effort. While it's true that these people are physically fit, and have some training, it's pretty obvious that they are not highly experienced mountaineers who worked up to the Everest challenge by doing even a score of other technically difficult peaks first. Thus, it suggests that the anecdotal evidence from those "infotainment" articles has some basis in fact.
Does that satisfy you? ;)
There's another interesting wrinkle. Attempting to summit Everest unprepared is not a modern thing. Consider Maurice Wilson's 1934 attempt, based on little more than fasting and prayer. Or the 1962 attempt by Woodrow Wilson Sayre and 3 colleagues, described by Sayre in "Four Against Everest." One review says "This is a true, almost unbelievable story of a daring attempt by four amateur mountaineers - a college professor, a school teacher, a lawyer, and a geology student - to climb the highest peak in the world!"
A more correct analysis might look to see if the percentage of attempts by inexperienced has increased over the decades.
VLM claimed "Most of them have climbed a zillion other mountains." (I'll interpret 'zillion' to mean "very experienced mountaineers, with years of mountain climbing and 50+ difficult peaks summitted." Perhaps you have a better definition?)
I was curious of the evidence which might back the validity of that claim. It's certainly true that some people who climb Everest are not highly experienced mountaineers. While VLM rejected my original references, I quickly found some counter-examples which show that it is not the case that all Everest climbers are very experienced mountaineers. ("Not all" is obviously not the same as "not most".)
My point stands, which is there is no data backing the claim that "Most of them have climbed a zillion other mountains."
It might be that 95% are very experienced, in which case VLM is justified in making the assertion. It might be that only 30% are so experienced.
Ahh! Here's one possibility. http://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032%2806%2970297-6/... has in table 1 information about some of the people attempting in 2003. Of the 108 people surveyed, on average there were about 1.47 previous attempts at an 8000 meter peak, of which about 0.7 were of Everest.
The standard deviation is 2.03, which means the distribution is very skewed. One person who did all 14 eight-thousanders balances out a lot of first-timers.
They also asked about the highest previous climb, and report:
> A histogram of previous altitude ever attained (Figure 1) shows a distinct peak at about 7000m. This is likely because of the influence of Mt Aconcagua in South America, a popular training ground for would-be Mt Everest summiteers. Although highest previous altitude ever attained initially appears to be a good measure of a climber's experience, the natural paucity of high-altitude peaks and the strong bias of climbers summiting Mt Aconcagua means that it is not possible, with our data, to determine depth of experience. Many of the climbers in this study may have climbed only once at high altitude, with very little other experience.
That paper agrees with my belief, which is that there isn't enough information to meaningfully claim that "Most of them have climbed a zillion other mountains."
Being good and helping each other instead of climbing stupid mountains for machismo?
People do it because it makes them happy.
People do things for a lot of reasons. "Because it makes them happy" is very low on that list of reasons.
Like, say, drug addicts and wife beaters, don't do what they do because "it makes them happy", the same thing applies to a lot of other stuff.
Other reasons: getting away from a situation that makes them unhappy instead of confronting it (e.g easier to risk death than deal with their family), trying to prove their "manhood", fashion for rich people, wanting to belong to an exclusive club, etc.
You seem to be surprised that someone can talk about other people's psychology. You know, there is such a thing as people having motives and hidden motives and other people discussing them.
In any case, I was speaking on aggregates. If you really want to learn about your specific psychology, visit a psychologist and tell him more about you. If you even browse relevant bibliography though, you'll find that "because it makes them happy" is quite low on the list of explanations for why people do things (or, more accurately, doesn't tell even half of the story, with the important part being: "WHY does it make them happy").
Its very much a personal triumph, as with endurance running and most other things it is not just (or at all) about fitness, there is a mental barrier that you have to cross in order to be able to do something like that. There is also the wonder in standing on top of the tallest place on earth.
I would definitely love to do it.
No, under the definition of having loved ones who will be terribly upset in case you die or irrepairably injure yourself.
I think it is rational to classify certain voluntary highly dangerous activities as selfish if others will suffer in case an accident happens to you.
By that definition all dangerous activities are selfish, I dont think thats useful.
Only proves that working on a startup can be selfish too.
I believe you have missed the short term vs long term risks. Most people think "selfish, expensive and dangerous" is a fantastic lifestyle, as long as the risks are long term.
The short term risk of dying on Everest is really low, like 5% or so (depending how you fudge the numbers, for example the death rate of people who summit is way higher than people who nope on the way to 3rd camp and come home, but on average someone who takes a leave of absence from work to "climb Everest" has about 95% chance of returning). Note that your very long term risk of death is approximately 100% so 5% isn't all that impressive.
The short term death rate from "selfish, expensive and dangerous" like smoking, drinking alcohol, eating fast food, watching TV is about zero plus or minus drunk driving. The long term death rate is far higher than climbing Everest.
So they just have a set of tradeoffs different than your own. More people have been killed watching TV shows about Everest because they sit on the couch and get fat and have a heart attack, than people killed actually climbing Everest.
The only thing sadder than people who died climbing Everest is people who died because they like bacon cheeseburgers too much, or they drink too much beer, or they got fat sitting on the couch watching Oprah reruns.
I've found greater satisfaction in parachuting than anything else I've tried in life. Parachuting was never a goal for me, but I found myself doing it one day and enjoying it. I kept doing it. It's rewarding in the same way as sports are, you find small goals and you reach them. You improve. You have a raison d'être. You feel things. Good things, horrible things, but you feel! You're not passing time. You're alive!
Had I been exposed to mountaineering earlier on in my life, maybe I would've been doing that instead. One should probably not underestimate the social aspect of such activities either. You do meet some great people.
Does anyone know why they can't simply send people up with all the modern technology like bottled oxygen to remove the bodies?
Even with lots of aids, it's still hard enough just to climb the mountain yourself. Carrying a body down with you vastly increases the difficulty.
There's a substantial chance that anyone who goes up to remove a body will instead become a new body needing removal.
Now imagine that your rescuer, having successfully bettered Mr. Body's achievement by getting to his high point alive, now has to perform the strenuous physical labor of digging Mr. B. out of the solid packed ice, picking up his 200 pound corpse, and carrying it the entire way back down to base camp.
What odds would you give our rescuer of surviving that task? 100%? Perhaps somewhat less than 100%? Less than 50%, much of which depends on factors outside anybody's control?
Would you volunteer for that job?
Some of these were taken with zoom lenses. The guy with the white skin exposed on his back is not accessible at all, IIRC.
As mentioned already, almost all climbers use bottled oxygen and have done so even in the first ever summit by Hillary et co. The climbs done without bottled oxygen are extremely rare and dangerous, only a handful of people, all experienced climbers, have done so. Bottled oxygen doesn't make you function as well as at sea level, it just prolongs the period a climber can spend in the death zone.
But climbing at that altitude is difficult and hard work all the time and there are some narrow ledges and vertical climbs where climbers will essentially have in a queue one at a time.
And there's only a few weeks per year when you can actually access the mountain summit. Most of the year the winds in the jet streams will blow at hundreds of miles an hour making the summit inaccessible. During the few weeks preceding the monsoon season, the jet streams will slow down and during that time there are so many climbers going up and down that it is literally crowded to the point that it is hard to move.
There have been a few successful rescue attempts of stricken but still alive climbers near the summit but the rescuers essentially risk their own lives to save their buddies.
An attempt to recover dead bodies at a risk to your own life is not deemed worth it, even if you disregard all the money and effort it takes.
Mount Everest & The Gas Laws [1]
[1] http://prezi.com/uyvudl1s2h7x/mount-everest-the-gas-laws/
However, even if you deal with the breathing mix issue, you're trying to carry frozen bodies off a mountain while you've just encumbered yourself with a heavy cylinder and it's already difficult to move with all the clothing you need to wear to keep warm.
If you ever have to move a dead body around, you will find it is quite difficult even with 2 people to help manoeuvre the body. I seriously doubt you would do anything more than end up as another statistic - just like the Nepalese police inspector and Sherpa the article described who tried to retrieve Hannelore Schmatz.
In extreme environments, you do not always have the option for the civilized society niceties - they will kill you and, on Everest, leave you frozen to the spot.
Obviously you have the support of your 'team', but if you go off on your own, then it really is your responsibility and yours alone.
This attitude also pervades "cave diving". Anything can and does happen and, as a diver, you understand the risks you are taking when exploring new cave systems and take full responsibility. It's an extremely risky "sport".
The book/film "into thin air" is supposedly good too.
EDIT: the other good climbing disaster film to watch is "touching the void." powerful stuff.
I personally prefer climbing without gear on less known places. 1 mile high in one day from sea level is enough exercise.
According to official statements, around 500 people, including about 300 tourists ascended mt.Everest last year, in a short 15 April - 10 May window.
Nowadays even local pop stars were managed to get to the top. Sherpas are doing great job and raised the safity livel to unimaginable heights.
Finds highly rated links that are a year old and reposts?
I posted this like a year ago with the exact same title.
I wrote that title, it is not from the article, it was before HN editors reverted titles.
Found my original post from three years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295
So it is a direct copy of my post with verbatim title copied.