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Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

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Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#191

Post by khafra »

alxp wrote: post #150
efalcao wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could, if you were willing to say something very silly. The death rate for car travel is around 1 per 100 million miles travelled. It's safer than just about anything besides riding in a commercial airliner; even lying in bed will kill you sooner.

The other half is that in most of America and many parts of the rest of the world, most people can't support themselves financially or otherwise without driving a car at least 5 days per week. The same is not true of climbing Mt. Everest.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#192

Post by nradov »

evgen wrote: post #187
nradov wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am concerned because someone seems to have fed you a bunch of misinformation, and unfortunately we tend to believe most whatever we hear first. Technical diving is not some kind of high-risk, white-knuckle adventure. It can be safe and fun in most any reasonable environment. Having a unified team actually increases your flexibility. When all your dive buddies have similar equipment and training then they're essenti…

I agree with you that tech diving can be safe and fun, but it is also possible for things to go wrong with deadly consequences. All I can say is that when I was doing technical diving you were always told that self-rescue was the first option. If your buddy and/or team can help you out then that was great, but we never dove with the assumption that our buddy or team would be able or available to help out. This means…

You are still misunderstanding the difference between accuracy versus precision, and overestimating the level of accuracy that any dive computer is capable of providing. Depth fluctuations are just one factor in determining gas loading. Sure a computer can sample depth every second and integrate that over time, but so what? There are so many other variables and unknowns that the margin of error is huge; you're missing the forest for the trees. The profile that a dive computer will generate for you is still fundamentally suboptimal (i.e. inaccurate) in multiple ways. I am not a particularly skilled or experienced diver, yet I learned how to do this stuff with just a little practice; anyone who cares to try can do the same. I'm not "getting away" with anything.

Look, I understand that technically-minded people want to believe that there is a "right" answer and that problems can be automated away. But the reality is that no one fully understands how decompression works and the mathematical models are fundamentally not accurate enough to be useful in the midst of a dive. Better to accept a certain level of uncertainty rather than believe a falsehood. Free your mind.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#193

Post by jhchen »

dasil003 wrote: post #152
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…

It takes all kinds. People with the balls to summit Everest are rare, and they provide great stories to humanity, just the same as astronauts, deep sea divers or spelunkers. I can admire that because it's unusual and inspiring, something that can not be said for people playing it safe. I won't judge you for your judgement, and I might even share it for people mountaineers who have kids, etc, but I can not agree with…

I don't think the point is risking life is bad in all cases. It depends on the possible gain. A simple example is a lot of people consider freedom something worth dying for.

But what is the gain here of climbing Everest after it has been climbed hundreds of times? Astronauts clearly benefit humanity with more than just great stories. I can't see much marginal benefit for society for each additional Everest climber.

I'm not saying it's wrong or selfish to continue to climb Everest. For the climber him/herself I imagine the benefits are enormous and perhaps worth the risk of life. But I just can't see much benefit for anyone else.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#194

Post by jaredhansen »

johnyzee wrote: post #82
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…

> These were people who no mountaineer in the world would accuse of being irresponsible, inexperienced, unprofessional, or, even, unsafe. This is what gets me about mountain climbing - you can't really be good at it, at least not in the sense that it will save your life. There are so many unknowable, uncontrollable factors that make the difference between life and death, to the extent that you play Russian Roulette w…

>the only reward being a spectacular view.

But that's precisely not the main reward. You can get a better view from an airplane, and who cares? Climbing isn't about the view any more than a solo circumnavigation in a small sailboat -- sure, you see amazing things and they're breathtakingly beautiful, but that's not why you do it.

I'm not a mountaineer and probably never will be, but I can definitely see the draw. It's the challenge itself, and the fact that the so much rests on your ability to focus and make rational decisions in the face of extreme danger.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#195

Post by mkramlich »

mwsfc wrote: post #115
brazzy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climbing Mt. Everest has nothing to do with exploration, and hasn't had for a long time. It's an industry catering to reckless thrill-seekers.

Has an industry sprung up around climbing Everest? Yes. Are all Everest climbers reckless thrill-seekers? No, no and No.

I would argue that if climbing Everest is not reckless thrill-seeking then nothing else is.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#196

Post by wtetzner »

Hexstream wrote: post #155
kbutler wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No.

Uh? What am I missing? "Because-it-is-there." The 's counts as one word, no? At least that's what I was always told.

The 's doesn't count as a word. "it's" is one word, but it has the same meaning as "it is".

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#197

Post by kscaldef »

khafra wrote: post #191
alxp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same thing about driving a car.

You could, if you were willing to say something very silly. The death rate for car travel is around 1 per 100 million miles travelled. It's safer than just about anything besides riding in a commercial airliner; even lying in bed will kill you sooner. The other half is that in most of America and many parts of the rest of the world, most people can't support themselves financially or otherwise without driving a car a…

> The death rate for car travel is around 1 per 100 million miles travelled. It's safer than just about anything besides riding in a commercial airliner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate

Automobile travel is one of the most likely voluntary activities to kill you, and the most likely direct cause of death (as opposed to things like smoking which kill you indirectly over time).

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#198

Post by Perceval »

billybob wrote: post #125
dminor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :)

Yeah, I TOTALLY respect Everest. Everest would kill me dead. That's why I'm staying the heck away from it. I respect lions, too.

Andy Stitzer: You know what? I respect women! I love women! I respect them so much that I completely stay away from them!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405422/quotes

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#199

Post by joshfraser »

phjohnst wrote: post #188
nostromo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This page ( http://www.8000ers.com/cms/everest-general-info-185.html ) shows 4102 attempts to reach the top with 216 deaths last year. That puts it at about 5% of climbs end in death. However, only about 2700 individuals climbed -- which puts the deaths / "uniques" back up to 8%. And if you assume that the sherpas die less frequently than do the tourists, 10% doesn't seem too far off. Interestingly, K2 seems to be mu…

Yes, K2 is is much more technically demanding climb (See the Black Pyramid, and basically any of the other less popular routes) and more unpredictable (falling seracs above the Bottleneck killed several climbers in 2008). It's usually only attempted by very skilled mountaineers. You won't find the same sort of climbing tour groups like operate on Everest - which is part of the reason why Everest, though the tallest,…

I recently met one of the 9 Americans to ever summit K2 where for every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. He quit after his friend didn't make it home.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#200

Post by boredguy8 »

benmathes wrote: post #171
boredguy8 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% failure rate is bad on a website about startups ? Now, we're talking life instead of life savings, but I find it hard to say that their decision is wrong in any ethical or moral sense, and I'm curious what moral framework would justify your viewpoint. Additionally, burning through your life savings (and that of friends/family) can easily cause more long-term harm than having a mom or dad that died while climbing…

Failure rate alone isn't enough to compare climbing Everest and running a startup. The cost of failure on Everest is ultimate, but the cost of failure in a startup is temporary and economic.

It's only 'ultimate' if dying is the 'ultimate' bad thing that can happen. Most people at most times and most places don't think that's true, and I agree with them. Not living is the ultimate bad thing that can happen, and respiration and living aren't the same thing, in this context.
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