Epic fail

I like discussions like this on here. It beats somebody saying cunt on the news by accident.

Josh Brolin played him in the Everest film about climbing Everest that's set on Everest. I think it's called "The Day My Nose Fell Off".

All I’m saying is if I was walking up and I was 30 minutes from the
top, I would spend 30 minutes trying to save a life rather than
walking on.

That actual dilemma:

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/feb/15/features11.g2

I am not advocating helicopter rescues tho. If nobody can carry a dead body down, then who will remove a broken helicopter? If motorised rescue became mandatory, the Himalayas would soon become a rusty junkyard. An even bigger embarrassment to future generations than the existing pile of gore tex clad mummies.

And 12 tons of shit.

Piles of rubbish everywhere, dozens of dead bodies and 12 tons of shit. It's like Newcastle.

Imagine how many climbers a busted helicopter could take with it on its way down.

But apparently a copter has landed briefly on the summit much to the anger of the authorities who were not informed of the plan. Probably because it was a fucking stupid idea.

I’ll just leave this here...

https://youtu.be/_RpzYLOx67A

Not when everyone’s looking after no.1 but if 40 people had passed a dying man, imagine if each of them had managed to move him even 10 metres.

In Sharp's case it took two of the strongest sherpas 20 minutes to move him 4 steps into the sun. Which was 20 minutes of endangering their own lives. The state of the body and mind in the Death Zone makes things that sound simple pretty much impossible. Of those 40 people, many were already in trouble with frostbite, lack of oxygen or exposure - the guy who copped most of the blame was a double amputee. Very tough decisions need to be made up there, and people know they can't expect rescue.

I don't think Everest needs to be climbed again. Leave it untouched as a monument to those left up there.

I've been a bit over 6k and I've never felt worse. I definitely wouldn't stop.

Someone got funny vision on the way up and all I thought at the time was, "cool. Now fuck off so we can get on with this miserable experience." There was also an insanely chirpy Dutch guy who kept using typical British phrases and sayings. If I'd had the energy I would have definitely killed him.

4.5km here, felt pretty much fine albeit a little wobbly. Is the enervation linear or exponential?

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I know a lot of people aren't fans but the Ant Middleton documentary on him climbing Everest, that was on earlier in the year touched on a lot of this showing both the dangers of inexperienced people on the mountain and on the crowding issues on summit day, worth a watch

For what it's worth, everybody is dying at that altitude.

We’re all dying, it just takes a little less time for some.

Deep.

Is it the one called Extreme Everest?

I think that's it, I binge-watched it last night.

At one point the sherpas are showing a chap how to attach to the rope correctly. They're 100m from summit.

"Half of the people didn't know what they were doing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE1lxvOOGdw

Yeh this is the one, I remember a scene where he lost his rag with someone struggling on the ladders crossing the Khumbu icefall and that they had no place on the mountain as were a danger to others, thought he handled it like a bit of a dick but actually probably gave that person a wake up call, doubt they listened after spending so much money but at least they were warned they weren't just a danger to themselves but others as well

If you had prepared properly it would seriously infuriate you to see someone being slapdash because it means you may have to walk past them as they plead for their life later:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … this guy should not have
been on Everest. Crampons on the wrong feet, a helmet on his rucksack
instead of his head and a few useless quick draws on his harness. He
didn’t even operate his jumar at each rebelay and his Climbing Sherpa
had to do it for him. He was a liability to himself … and to everyone
around him.

https://everestexpedition.co.uk/everest/seven-attributes-to-climb-everest/

The thunderstorm scene is fucking crazy, must have been like being on another planet.
I'm fascinated by the whole Everest thing but have absolutely no desire to do anything remotely as brave/stupid.

I don't think Nepal/Everest is particularly unique in this regard, it's just like any other country in the world where you have rich westerners, poor uneducated (as in, there's barely any schools in the Himalayas) locals and an ineffective government. People ignore regulations and procedures and take risks because they want or need the life-changing amount of money on offer.

Everyone shares part of the blame. The westerners fund the whole thing, the government fails to manage it, and a subset of Sherpas convince unqualified westerners that they can handle the trip. We have this concept of liability over here, that if an expert says "I can take you up the hill, don't worry", that they are qualified to assess your abilities and their own, and the responsibility for that decision lies on the expert's shoulders. But that breaks down when the expert is terribly poor and it's a international trip - an American family can't really sue a Sherpa in Nepal who's got £100 to his name, can they? And a westerner could be forgiven for trusting an expert who says they're qualified, even if they should know better.

I don't mean to blame Sherpas with this comment, I'm just pointing out one aspect of the situation that has been overlooked. It's a combination of several factors together that makes the whole thing as shit as it is.

Most people aren't rocking up in Kathmandu and hiring a local guide to go up Everest, they are booking through international agencies, so it's American or European experts telling the clients they can do it and dumping the client on a local employee, I think that's a slightly different dynamic.

Also we keep talking about the classic, Nepalese southern route but you can also climb it from the Chinese side and they have recently introduced a permitting system to limit numbers and clean up the Northern side.

True, and then as a Sherpa you face the choice between taking the underqualified guy up the mountain or losing your contract/whatever with the agency who hired you. There are several points in the chain where there are people saying "you'll be fine up there, don't worry".

Ultimately the problem needs to be handled by the Nepalese government. Deaths look bad for them and have an impact on tourist numbers. But with such limited resources (and corruption to contend with) the deaths of a few tourists per year is small fry in comparison with the other problems in the country.

I honestly thought they were changing the system so you had to 3 (?) 8000-ers before you could get a permit, but I can't find any evidence of that.

A system that mandates more travel to Nepal and up mountains would be good for the country. It solves the overcrowding on Everest, weeds out some of the underqualified people, generates yet more revenue, etc.

Isn't Everest normal route literally the easiest 8000m summit? Might be a bit weird to insist that people do harder first.