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Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

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Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#51

Post by dragonquest »

wooster wrote: post #43
antidaily wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr This guy pooped in a 8" hole.

I'm not sure why everyone is down-modding you. Pooping in an 8" hole and climbing to 19,850 feet seems like a pretty good summary of the experience. Edit: I might actually use that as my short summary of the trip.

It is probably because it is not really a good summary of the poster's experience. It also has a hint of being mildly disrespectful of the difficulties of really climbing to 20k feet by not acknowledging the experience in totality and merely highlighting 'pooping'. If it was not a jab, it atleast sounded like one.

I've never made it to 20K, infact the highest I've reached is 15k feet being a non-professional climber and it is hard to do justice of the difficulty of every step after 12k. From the difficulty in breathing to not being able to sit for anything more than 30 seconds, it is really a testament to the strength of the climbers who make it to 20k and above like the OP.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#52

Post by JoachimSchipper »

wooster wrote: post #43
antidaily wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr This guy pooped in a 8" hole.

I'm not sure why everyone is down-modding you. Pooping in an 8" hole and climbing to 19,850 feet seems like a pretty good summary of the experience. Edit: I might actually use that as my short summary of the trip.

While I think the grandparent comment could be considered disrespectful, note that the commenter I'm replying to is the original poster in this thread, i.e. the guy that actually climbed the mountain (and, apparently, pooped in an 8" hole).

So please don't downvote too much.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#54

Post by codelust »

ra wrote: post #37

For a gripping first hand account of the danger and sheer lunacy of today's Mount Everest, I highly recommend "Into Thin Air", by Jon Krakauer http://books.google.com.au/books?id=upIXVwLhGj0C

Excerpt: http://outsideonline.com/outside/destinations/199609/travel-...

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#55

Post by rdl »

wooster wrote: post #48
rdl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space is inherently dangerous, but since it's so high visibility (and funded by deep pockets), they can use technology to reduce the risk below most activities. I think they go too far in reducing the risk -- I'd accept a 10% fatality rate for important space missions if everyone was a volunteer, if it improved the rate of progress. We know how to do diving in worse environments than caves relatively safely -- commer…

Oof, I don't think the fatality rate on SEALs is public, but trust me, it's not good.

Naval diving is Navy or Coast Guard (or Army underwater construction) diving done by hard hat divers to repair ships, salvage, do dock maintenance, etc. It is not "all diving done by Navy personnel". They're ND ratings, and while technically part of Naval Special operations, not SEALs. There are probably some special missions where Naval divers have done something special opsy (tapping undersea cables, or salvaging a foreign nation's warship without their knowledge or consent), but it's not routine. Naval diving techniques are basically adapted commercial techniques, and in a lot of cases are more conservative and safer than what cheap commercial contractors use.

SEALs are probably never qualified Naval divers, unless they start out as Naval divers and then switch to SEALs.

What SEALS do -- Combat diving, combat swimming, etc. is called "military diving". That tends to be dangerous, although not as much due to the diving aspects (it's a lot of oxygen or other rebreather use at shallow depths, undersea scooters for long transits, etc.), as due to the other people trying to kill you. Also, at least recently, SEALs mainly engage in combat on land in countries with no contiguous oceans :)

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#56

Post by wooster »

rdl wrote: post #55
wooster wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, I don't think the fatality rate on SEALs is public, but trust me, it's not good.

Naval diving is Navy or Coast Guard (or Army underwater construction) diving done by hard hat divers to repair ships, salvage, do dock maintenance, etc. It is not "all diving done by Navy personnel". They're ND ratings, and while technically part of Naval Special operations, not SEALs. There are probably some special missions where Naval divers have done something special opsy (tapping undersea cables, or salvaging a…

Let's just say night insertions are stupid and be done with it.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#57

Post by thaumaturgy »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #46
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…

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.

Mountaineering in general is not just about the views, wildlife, and other unique memories, it's also about being probably the hardest thing you will ever do, mentally, and physically.

One of my hobbies used to be brutal enduro-hiking, and my little trip up Rainier years ago still stands out in my memory as the hardest thing I've ever done.

If HN readers really need that entrepreneur spin on this, then I'd suggest that there are a lot of parallels between summiting (and knowing when not to summit) and entrepreneurship.

Everest specifically is probably more because it's a trophy; there are a lot of mountains out there that would afford a pretty similar challenge.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#58

Post by dkarl »

mks wrote: post #35

Articles like this are very suggestive - of course while in the warm, in front of the computer everyone would try to rescue the poor climbers. However add difficult terrain, height, snow, fatigue and race with the clock and you have wholly different story. Consider how much effort is needed to transport someone by Mountain Rescue teams in lower mountains ( Even seasoned climbers admit that you are pretty much solo on…

I'm pretty sure the moral choice was easy at first -- of course you help! -- and then got harder as there were more and more tragic outcomes, until it swung all the way to becoming an easy "no." It is morally correct, perhaps mandatory depending on your beliefs, to value your own life as much as another person's, especially one climber valuing his own life as much as another's. You have to balance the odds of dying yourself against the odds of saving another person. Plus, under those conditions you would be risking several lives -- an entire team -- on helping a single person who has a slim chance of survival, in a situation where the rescuers have little more strength than what is required to sustain and control their own bodies. This assessment might be considered unduly pessimistic if there were not plenty of deadly history supporting it, but there is. Therefore, it seems like an easy decision to me. Not that it matters what I think, since I'll never be there to make it!

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#59

Post by InclinedPlane »

mks wrote: post #35

Articles like this are very suggestive - of course while in the warm, in front of the computer everyone would try to rescue the poor climbers. However add difficult terrain, height, snow, fatigue and race with the clock and you have wholly different story. Consider how much effort is needed to transport someone by Mountain Rescue teams in lower mountains ( Even seasoned climbers admit that you are pretty much solo on…

Ultimately it is a matter of priorities. Yes rescue is difficult in the death zone. Yes people are generally on their own up there and if you fuck up and die it's on you.

But on the other hand, why are you climbing? It takes resources and a very serious effort to get to the summit and back down. And it takes a particular kind of person to do that, to use all those resources and expend all that effort while stepping over corpses or soon-to-be corpses of others. That's not mountaineering to me.

I have never been on Everest and likely never will be, so I can't say whether I would attempt a rescue. Nevertheless, I don't think I could live with myself if I pursued the summit while others were dying.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#60

Post by zaidf »

swombat wrote: post #8
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…

There's a difference between even screwing over your best friend ("The Social Network"-style) and leaving them to die alone in a frozen desert of hell, where their mummified remains will stand for years to come as a grim reminder that someone left them behind. Sure, there's some very distant analogy, but it's really a different kettle of fish.

Especially when "screwing over" means settling a lawsuit with gazillions of dollars.

I agree, I don't see much of a similarity between startups and risking death--literally.

It seems tantalizing and there is lots of vague overlap in attitudes and risks but that is something startups share with anything requiring lots of hard work, passion and commitment.

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