More Deaths on Mt. Everest

[SGOS]

While more people than ever have been reaching the top, the danger increases.  Get to the top and get back down.  Don't dawdle.  You've got to get down!  Quick!  Every recent account I read on Everest talks about the long lines of climbers that queue at critically restricted paths along the route, most notably, the Hillary Step, a short but almost vertical rope climb that creates a traffic jam near the top of the mountain in the "Death Zone" of oxygen poor air.

Climbers that reach the top need to get to lower elevations or they die.  They often get stalled by lines of 30 or more climbers queued below the step.  Climbers suffering oxygen deprivation, must wait at the top until the line clears, and the wait time gets longer every year.  This would ordinarily be a panic situation, but returning climbers are already so dim witted and in La La Land, that they could be hallucinating that they are walking on a beach as they succumb to deadly altitude sickness.

Coordination between rival guide services is poor, mostly because climbing conditions trump all coordination.  The mountain remains empty of climbers for weeks at a time, until a window of opportunity unleashes a stampede of climbers released by competitive guide services all on the same day.  The Services main motivation is getting big paying climbers to the top.  God forbid another service would get more climbers to the top.  The next year, the most successful services would get all the business.  And collecting fees of 50 to 100 thousand dollars per climber are why the services exist, and why they advertise to entice more climbers each year to take the ever increasing risk.  And no climbing experience is necessary to get a reservation.

Everyone knows the answer on how to make it safer, but it ain't goin' to happen, in my opinion.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/indian-climber-3rd-die-mount-everest-recent-days-050218537.html

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) â€" An Indian climber has died while being helped down Mount Everest, just a couple of days after a Dutch and an Australian died near the peak. Two other Indian climbers are missing, and experts say some of the tragedy may have been avoidable.

Poor planning and overcrowding on the world's tallest peak may have led to bottlenecks that kept people delayed at the highest reaches while waiting for the path to clear lower down, Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said Monday.

"This was a man-made disaster that may have been minimized with better management of the teams," he said. "The last two disasters on Everest were caused by nature, but not this one."

Many had hoped this year's climbing season would bring success and restore confidence in the route, after deadly disasters canceled climbing the previous two years. But as hundreds of eager climbers, joined by local Sherpa guides and expedition experts, scrambled to take advantage of good weather to make it to the peak, reports of tragedy began trickling down the mountain.

First, a 35-year-old Dutch man, Eric Arnold, died on his way down from the peak from altitude sickness. Hours later, a 34-year-old Australian woman, Maria Strydom, died near the top, also after apparently suffering from altitude sickness.

On Monday, Subhash Paul of India was reported as the third death after succumbing to altitude sickness overnight as he was being helped down the mountain by Sherpa guides, said Wangchu Sherpa of the Trekking Camp Nepal agency in Kathmandu.

An Indian woman from Paul's team, Sunita Hazra, was resting at a lower-altitude camp after becoming ill higher up. But two other Indian climbers â€" Paresh Nath and Goutam Ghosh â€" have been missing since Saturday. Wangchu Sherpa said it was unlikely they would be able to survive Everest's hostile conditions.

Dozens of other climbers have developed frostbite or become sick near the summit in recent days, including the Australian woman's husband, Robert Gropal, who was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu on Monday for treatment.

Tshering said the competition between expedition organizers has become so fierce that they are dropping their prices, which can lead to compromises in hiring equipment, oxygen tanks and experienced guides to help get climbers to the top.

"Teams are hiring raw guides that have no knowledge of responding to situations of emergency," he said.

Belgian climber Jelle Vegt, who reached the peak on May 13, said that he made his attempt when there were fewer climbers on the narrow route snaking to the top, but that bad weather then forced many others to wait a few days.

Then, "a lot of people tried to go on the same weather window," the 30-year-old from Deldermond said after returning to Kathmandu.

Since Everest was first conquered by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, more than 4,000 climbers have reached the 8,850-meter-high (29,035-foot-high) peak.

Nearly 400 of those climbers reached the summit since May 11. Nepal's government had issued permits this year to 289 climbers, each of whom paid $11,000 to the government, plus another $25,000-$50,000 to an expedition company that provides guides, equipment and, often, bottled oxygen to use at high altitudes where the atmosphere is thin. The climbers are accompanied on the mountain by around 400 local Nepalese Sherpa guides.

Nepal and the Everest climbing community had been anxious for a successful season this year. The industry brings more than $3 million from permit fees alone into the poor, Himalayan country each year, and thousands of locals depend on the climbing season for secondary work as porters, hotel keepers or cooks.

Last year, a devastating earthquake unleashed an avalanche that killed 19 people at Base Camp, effectively ending all attempts at the peak for 2015. A year earlier, a massive ice fall on a glacier that is part of the route to the top killed 16 and rendered the route impassable for the season.

Before that, the worst disaster had been caused by a fierce blizzard in 1996 that killed eight climbers and was memorialized by Jon Krakauer in the book "Into Thin Air."

But while hundreds have died trying to reach the top of Everest due to avalanches, altitude sickness, exposure and other dangers, the use of bottled oxygen and better equipment had helped reduce the number of deaths each year. Satellite communication equipment and better medical facilities have also helped prevent tragedy.

Yet, some criticize expedition companies for taking novice climbers without any mountaineering experience. There are no regulations to require climbers to have any past experience before trying Everest.

[Mermaid]

10% of the people who attempt the mountain die doing it. People have to quite literally step over dead bodies of climbers to get to the summit.

[SGOS]

10% of the people who attempt the mountain die doing it. People have to quite literally step over dead bodies of climbers to get to the summit.

It's always been dangerous, but years ago, much of the risk depended on a climber's experience, endurance, and ability.  Now much of a climber's personal ability has been cancelled out by overcrowding, making the accomplishment more based on the luck of circumstances.  And walking past dead guys turns the adventure into a tour through a bizarre world of surrealism.  That must take away from the thrill of summiting.  At the end of the climb, I think I'd be more sickened than satisfied.

[aitm]

I have no sympathy. Nor for anyone who places themselves in danger for a thrill. Or even place them self in danger due to sheer stupidity or arrogance. Had a hurricane a few years back and the islands were ordered abandoned. One couple did not and when the house starting breaking up she called for help......too bad you stupido....we no come get you....there's a hurricane out there you moron.

[aitm]

oh yeah....she made it, her hubby not so much.

[Flanker1Six]

This is weird! 

I've spent my entire adult life doing something that is inherently dangerous for a living.  I guess it comes down to how much assessed risk you're willing to accept, and for what purpose.   I've NEVER understood the desire to mountain climb or other shit like that.  Good grief!  Look at the money they have to shell out for that shit!!!  You couldn't get me to do it if they were paying me.   On the other hand..................there are all the motorcycle wrecks, sky diving, and other silly shit I paid to do.....................so who am I to throw stones?   Besides......................it sounds like a lotta ******* work to me.  I'm too lazy to climb hills let alone mountains!   

[Hydra009]

I'll stick to National Geographic for the view from Everest.  Seems a lot less costly.

[Hydra009]

I've NEVER understood the desire to mountain climb or other shit like that.  Good grief!  Look at the money they have to shell out for that shit!!!

I don't get it either.  I guess it's the sense of accomplishment from doing something few people will ever do.  But the main reasons few people will ever do it is because of the enormous expense and risk involved.

The risk-to-payoff ratio seems a bit high.  The fatality rate is way higher than base jumping, skydiving, or racing.  And considering the low success rate, it doesn't seem worth it imho.

[SGOS]

The risk-to-payoff ratio seems a bit high.  The fatality rate is way higher than base jumping, skydiving, or racing.  And considering the low success rate, it doesn't seem worth it imho.

And some people shell out $60,000 to $100,000 for the guide service, and still don't get to the top, their one chance taken from them by a series of storms, or they get dysentery in the base camp, or they just don't have the endurance.  Of course you get to see Nepal, and the scenery must be incredible, even if you don't get to the top.

As an extra point of interest, because the Earth's spin tends to flatten the poles and causes a bulge at the equator, Ecuador is claiming to have a mountain even higher than Everest.  Of course they are measuring from the Earth's center, rather than from sea level, but I don't think anyone is taking them seriously.  Although, they kind of have a point, depending on how you look at it.

[Mike Cl]

10% of the people who attempt the mountain die doing it. People have to quite literally step over dead bodies of climbers to get to the summit.

Natures way of weeding out the stupid.

[Baruch]

I free climbed a 100 ft cliff in a canyon once, with a friend, when i was young.  Stupid shortcut.  I did get to the top of a small mountain with another friend ... and it was an overcast day.  When we got to the top (maybe 1000 ft up from the valley, just a long steep walk) I had my hair stand on end, because of the high voltage being generated by those overcast clouds, and I was the highest object for several miles around ... we got into a crouch, then high tailed it down 1000 ft faster than we ever did before or since.  There is another mountain that is the only 14,000 elevation mountain you can drive up, in Colorado.  Mt Evans.  It is only open for a few weeks each year.  My wife and I and my toddler daughter summited, but no snow and ice, and it was just a 100 ft steep climb from the parking area.  But the view was great!  Of course we took good care of our toddler given all the fatal drops all around us.  Mt Everest is twice as tall as Mt Evans!

[Hydra009]

As an extra point of interest, because the Earth's spin tends to flatten the poles and causes a bulge at the equator, Ecuador is claiming to have a mountain even higher than Everest.  Of course they are measuring from the Earth's center, rather than from sea level, but I don't think anyone is taking them seriously.  Although, they kind of have a point, depending on how you look at it.

Not going from sea level kinda skews the data - and in their favor, which I doubt is a coincidence.  It'd be like Greenland claiming to be bigger than Australia using the Mercator projection.  Not true in actuality, but if you fudge the data enough, it sure seems that way.

[stromboli]

One of the people who died was apparently a vegan/vegetarian setting out to prove they could accomplish anything, or some such. Insert "dead vegan" comments as you see fit....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/23/woman-trying-to-prove-vegans-can-do-anything-among-three-dead-on-everest-two-more-missing-and-thirty-sick-or-frostbitten/




Smite me with hateful words for being so callous.

[Flanker1Six]

I free climbed a 100 ft cliff in a canyon once, with a friend, when i was young.  Stupid shortcut.  I did get to the top of a small mountain with another friend ... and it was an overcast day.  When we got to the top (maybe 1000 ft up from the valley, just a long steep walk) I had my hair stand on end, because of the high voltage being generated by those overcast clouds, and I was the highest object for several miles around ... we got into a crouch, then high tailed it down 1000 ft faster than we ever did before or since.  There is another mountain that is the only 14,000 elevation mountain you can drive up, in Colorado.  Mt Evans.  It is only open for a few weeks each year.  My wife and I and my toddler daughter summited, but no snow and ice, and it was just a 100 ft steep climb from the parking area.  But the view was great!  Of course we took good care of our toddler given all the fatal drops all around us.  Mt Everest is twice as tall as Mt Evans!

I'm pretty sure you missed a golden opportunity to pimp the rest of us with a story about how you had a "divine" experience as evidenced by your electro staticlly charged hair.  It impressed me anyway!   

[Baruch]

That is not a paranormal experience, unless you pissed off Zeus ;-)