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Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

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Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#141

Post by ohashi »

dminor wrote: post #123
jvdh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what makes mountaineering so awesome, at least for me. In modern society most people have lost their respect for nature. Going into the mountains and climbing them makes you respect nature in all its awesome force. You're walking a very fine line, where you're taking risks but also mitigating those risks by using proper equipment. For the most part this is a skills based discipline, but the fact remai…

> In modern society most people have lost their respect for nature. So the people who don't risk their lives climbing mountains have lost their respect for nature? I think you might have that exactly backwards :)

I am having a hard time trying to verbalize the difference between knowing something is there and experiencing it first hand and the difference. I think there is a difference, hopefully someone more eloquent than myself can explain.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#142

Post by physcab »

I was fortunate to hear Peter Hillary speak last week while I was home on Thanksgiving break. His stories were amazing. I was absolutely floored the entire two hours. A couple quotes I remember (and damn I wish I brought a pen and paper)...some of these may be paraphrases:

"On the top of Everest, your perception of reality is distorted. I remember thinking, 'wow, its really cloudy down there' while looking down the mountain. When I got back to base camp, I looked at the pictures we had taken. There were no clouds. It was clear as day"

"People often ask me what I'm most afraid of. Sure the elements are tough...but what gets me is more mental. Often when you hike you are alone in your thoughts for days,weeks, even months at a time. You have nothing to do but think, and if you don't have the mental discipline, you can deteriorate quickly. Its important to have good relationships with your family, your friends, and especially your climbing mate"

"I once went on a trip to the North Pole with some friends and my dad Edmund. You may know them. They were Buzz Aldrin and Steve Fosset"

"The last time I went to Everest, National Geographic sponsored the hike and the plan was to have a 3-way phone conversation with my dad and the [CBS/NBC/ABC] affiliate in New York because it was the 50th anniversary of my dad's first climb. When we got to the summit, I phoned in despite my hands rapidly becoming frostbitten and the affiliate said, 'Gosh, we're really busy here. Can you hold on a minute. Theres a conflict going on in Afghanistan right now'...'What? I can see Afghanistan!'"

"When I went to the South Pole I had to train in a rather unusual manner. On that trip we had to pull a [x100lb] sack of supplies behind us for a month straight while cross-country skiing. To train, I tied a bunch of tires around my waist and went jogging with my son in a stroller. You can imagine the weird looks I got"

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#143

Post by jodrellblank »

"A National Geographic climber originally on Everest to document Brian Blessed's (ultimately botched) attempt at summiting"

On QI recently, they said on Brian Blessed's closest approach, he abandoned his climb and turned back to help an injured climber. In the context of this essay about bodies it's not on to call that a "botched" attempt.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#144

Post by jodrellblank »

webwright wrote: post #138
wooster wrote: post #27

I recently got back (almost exactly a month ago) from a month long climbing trip in Nepal with some friends. We had three guides, all three of whom have climbed Everest multiple times. One of our guides, who has summited 5 times, described Everest as his "bad habit". As a relative newbie to high altitude mountaineering (the highest I got was ~19,850 feet), climbing in Nepal was really, really hard. You are never warm…

I'm going to go ahead and judge. 1 in 10. Your have a 10% chance of dying if you attempt a summit, right? How much pain is your untimely death going to cause if it happens? How many everest orphans and widows are there? Include in that the considerable cost and time investment to do this when you could be creating something, exploring something that has a conceivable chance of helping humanity, or just plain investin…

No, this is a hugely selfish act

You say that like being selfish is automatically and unquestionably a bad thing.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#145

Post by efalcao »

webwright wrote: post #138
wooster wrote: post #27

I recently got back (almost exactly a month ago) from a month long climbing trip in Nepal with some friends. We had three guides, all three of whom have climbed Everest multiple times. One of our guides, who has summited 5 times, described Everest as his "bad habit". As a relative newbie to high altitude mountaineering (the highest I got was ~19,850 feet), climbing in Nepal was really, really hard. You are never warm…

I'm going to go ahead and judge. 1 in 10. Your have a 10% chance of dying if you attempt a summit, right? How much pain is your untimely death going to cause if it happens? How many everest orphans and widows are there? Include in that the considerable cost and time investment to do this when you could be creating something, exploring something that has a conceivable chance of helping humanity, or just plain investin…

I think the actual mortality rate is closer to 2%. I don't know if that changes your opinion at all. Frankly, I feel that even at 2% mortality, it's a pretty selfish act if anybody else depends on you.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#146

Post by poet »

Evgeny wrote: post #78
JoachimSchipper wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate a bit on why you'd see people wanting to do this? I mean, I understand that mountain climbing affords a nice view, and I understand that it's a feat that you can tell people about, but I can't imagine being willing to take a risk as large as Mt. Everest for those reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort: "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering".

Mallory also had a pretty strained relationship with his wife as a result of his mountaineering. If I remember correctly, he promised her several times he would never go back to Everest but always ended up going. I'm not saying I don't sympathize with his dilema, but it's worth pointing out that there are two sides to those famous words.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#147

Post by varjag »

dchest wrote: post #124
varjag wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainstream printed media is much better with attribution in general.

Mainstream blogs too, what's the point of this debate?

By "mainstream" I mean normal, non-crackpot outlets who are/were main distribution channels for information to people. In old business, major national newspapers, weeklies, monthly magazines, regional/city papers were fairly good at attribution. Of course plagiarism, stealing and other forms of non-ethical behavior were not unheard of, but not anywhere on par with new media.

Nowadays mainstream sources of information are supposedly replaced by swarms of bloggers and citizen journalists. This one is perfect example. Such a thing as non-attribution is now par for the course. You don't notice how common is it because you are not paying attention.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#148

Post by jonhendry »

Mz wrote: post #76
makeramen wrote: post #4

I'm not the only one noticing the connection to startups right? Though not as morbid, I would imagine "stepping over dead bodies" and "leaving teammates behind" is a rather common experience in startups as well, though potentially frowned upon (but even then, it would depend on the situation). EDIT: I think I need to clarify, I'm thinking more that startup COMPANIES are like everest climbers, trying to reach profitab…

Your thought makes me think of some tidbit from an interview on a show. It was an HGTV episode about extreme homes -- some guy with some ridiculously large house that cost gajillions to build. (IIRC) He had been a military pilot who flew more than 100 missions, all of which involved someone shooting at him. He went into real estate after he left the military on the theory that high risk, high finance real estate coul…

"the theory that high risk, high finance real estate couldn't be more nerve wracking than that. Obviously, he made scads of money"

I wonder how he's doing now.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#150

Post by alxp »

efalcao wrote: post #145
webwright wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go ahead and judge. 1 in 10. Your have a 10% chance of dying if you attempt a summit, right? How much pain is your untimely death going to cause if it happens? How many everest orphans and widows are there? Include in that the considerable cost and time investment to do this when you could be creating something, exploring something that has a conceivable chance of helping humanity, or just plain investin…

I think the actual mortality rate is closer to 2%. I don't know if that changes your opinion at all. Frankly, I feel that even at 2% mortality, it's a pretty selfish act if anybody else depends on you.

You could say the same thing about driving a car.
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