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Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

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Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#61

Post by cubicle67 »

dragonquest wrote: post #51
wooster wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

not sure if you've realised it yet, but the person you're replying to is the OP

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#62

Post by rdl »

wooster wrote: post #56
rdl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

s/night insertions/wars/

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#63

Post by wyclif »

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

I second the recommendation, I read that a few years ago and it is an incredible story. Krakauer tells it as one who was gripped by Everest fever, fascinated by the mountain itself but also the colourful personalities drawn to the most serious level of high altitude mountaineering-- but also a man who has seen his friends succumb to the madness of obsession, and ultimately death. It was hard for me to put down; a compelling read for anyone interested in travel or the outdoors.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#64

Post by gjm11 »

rdl wrote: post #25
nradov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually only about half that price or less (in the US), unless you get into the really extreme stuff. There is a lot more to diving safety than just using the correct gas mixes. The training and procedures developed by groups like the WKPP and GUE have now taken nearly all the risk out of technical diving. http://www.gue.com/

Yes for caves. Caves are easy and safe compared to deep open ocean wrecks. Caves may actually be within the "reasonable to do recreationally" level, and WKPP is or was actually doing worthwhile environmental science too. Outside of the US, helium is seriously expensive. I was figuring dual rebreathers, or rebreather + OC bailout. $800 in gas alone for a 100m training dive for TDI Adv Nitrox, open circuit. WKPP and GU…

> Outside the US, helium is seriously expensive.

OT, but: That would be because it's rare and hard to extract and running out. It's only cheap in the US because in 1996 some genius passed a law requiring it to be sold cheaply to use up the US's helium reserves.

The likely result is that the world will be basically completely out of helium by about 2050. Too bad for anyone not-very-rich who needs an MRI scan at that point.

See, e.g., http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/08/25/nobel-p... for more.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#65

Post by wooster »

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.

It's just the way some people are wired, and sometimes peoples' wiring changes. They may decide they're not comfortable with the idea of someone else being able to do something they can't. They may have always wanted to climb the highest mountain in the world. They may just want to add it to their summit collection. Sometimes it's just a job. Sometimes it's a trophy, or the crowning achievement of a lifetime.

I used to have arguments with one of my old roommates about space exploration. He would argue that if we found a planet several thousand light years away that could support human life, we'd never get there because nobody would volunteer to go. I could never get through to him that there are people who will take any risk to get to do something like that, even if it meant only being memorialized in the memories of their distant descendants or being frozen for a few thousand years and never again seeing everything they'd ever known.

However, human history supports the idea that there will always be those few who are willing to do things for reasons which evade the rest of the human race. That's just the way we're wired.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#66

Post by wyclif »

CamperBob wrote: post #45
ck2 wrote: post #2

Is it ego or the "human spirit" that makes people try the summit anyway? Some things I'll never understand in this world. How about just running a marathon instead?

How about just running a marathon instead? How about just taking whatever drugs are necessary to stimulate the same neurotransmitter production?

I'm a big fan of inexpensive hobbies that allow me to keep both feet at sea level.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#68

Post by rdl »

gjm11 wrote: post #64
rdl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes for caves. Caves are easy and safe compared to deep open ocean wrecks. Caves may actually be within the "reasonable to do recreationally" level, and WKPP is or was actually doing worthwhile environmental science too. Outside of the US, helium is seriously expensive. I was figuring dual rebreathers, or rebreather + OC bailout. $800 in gas alone for a 100m training dive for TDI Adv Nitrox, open circuit. WKPP and GU…

> Outside the US, helium is seriously expensive. OT, but: That would be because it's rare and hard to extract and running out. It's only cheap in the US because in 1996 some genius passed a law requiring it to be sold cheaply to use up the US's helium reserves. The likely result is that the world will be basically completely out of helium by about 2050. Too bad for anyone not-very-rich who needs an MRI scan at that p…

I'm betting we'll switch to hypoxic hydrogen ("Hydrox") for deep (>40m) diving then, or use atmospheric dive suits and ROVs only.

Hydrogen is a pain to deal with on the surface and in transport, but if you're putting it into something like 95/5 hydrogen/oxygen bottom gas, is not going to explode. At >30m, that's quite breathable. Some kind of hydrogen-based trimix is probably acceptable at that point. Continue to use nitrox and 100% oxygen for the shallow stops.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#69

Post by cookiecaper »

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 agree, but I also want to point out that in most cases people are only going to be passing already-dead corpses, not living people who need to be helped or saved.

Having just read information on the 1996 Everest blizzard, it seems that guides and other climbers generally try to help those that are dying or struggling, but the options are few, and the oblique, ignorant "If they're still breathing there's still hope!" just creates more deaths in the long run. You can only do so much, and if someone is too far gone, there is no point in risking the death of the would-be rescuers in a futile attempt.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#70

Post by mfukar »

dkarl wrote: post #58
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 y…

The moral dilemma quickly becomes a question against your own survival instinct, in places like the Everest.
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