The Everest version of Poppy People

Here we are - peak climbing season on Everest (pun intended) when the onset of monsoonal weather in the SE creates a potential calming of winds at the peak. People are dying - not because of accidents - but because the massive crowds are causing backups and slowing in the final 24 hour push to the peak. You have a limited time to get from Camp Four to the summit because your body is literally dying from lack of oxygen. It is a race against time where lines = death.

A photo this week of the crowds at the Hillary Step just past the South (false) Summit. Three more climbers died this week bringing the season total to at least seven (two more climbers are missing and have not yet been declared dead). Note the climber SITTING in the foreground.

Definitely an activity for the "finish line is more important than the journey" people.



Black* on a weekend is less crowded.

 

Thanks for sharing, Bonsai...

Reading the NY Times article, I expected them all to be newbs. Several of those who died were experienced climbers- some with multiple Everest climbs under their belts. One was finishing his quest to climb the highest peak on all 7 continents...

The tour companies are specifically blaming the increased traffic and the record number of permits issued.

 

ie the tour companies are blaming themselves?

 

More like they’re trying to shift blame to the governments that issue the permits-more than any other year.

 

My point being that the tour companies have many of those climbers as their own clients. Though the article gave no breakdown of tour companies versus independent teams.

 

Into Thin Air all over again.

That puts the Half Dome cables to shame. And that's saying something...

 

Ha hah! I know EXACTLY what that meant. Been there... done that.

That above pic is a Felony, in my opinion. Way to much risk, based on bad overall planning.

 

No thanks. BTW thats what angels landing looked like last time i went there.

 

The area is extremely poor. For the Sherpas, it is their main source of income. The permits used to cost $50,000 each... and everyone complained about it. So they've lowered the price to $11,000, but now they have to sell 5x as many just to make as much money. At $50,000, it used to be that you either had to be pretty wealthy, or you had to be an elite climber with sponsors. Now $11,000 is within the range of a lot more people.

Whoever the tard is that came up with the idea of the "seven summits" should be shot. Nothing special about the seven tallest peaks on the seven continents... in fact even Everest is not the most technically challenging climb in Asia. But there are no shortage of people who set their sights on this artificial "finish line" contest. This represents everything that I despise about commercial outdoor activities. All hype - all money - all ego. Does anyone just go out into nature for the joy of it any more?

One of my buddies took a trip to Everest Base Camp just to do it. He actually got altitude sickness on the way to Base Camp and had to turn around and spend a night at a lower elevation to acclimate. Then when he tried to return to the states, there were riots in Katmandu and the airport was closed. I had to go tell our boss they he wasn't going to return from vacation on time because he was stuck in Nepal. She wasn't happy... he had run out of vacation days

@mike Speaking of Into Thin Air... my parents are friends with Scott Fischer's parents. Of all the deaths, I view his as the most tragic - and avoidable.

 

This section of the climb, everyone is roped up. You just can't see it, because there are so many on the ropes you can't see the ropes

It is the last section of the climb where ropes are used. It is also probably the most dangerous section because many climbers use up their last reserves to clear this stretch, stroll the next couple hundred yards to the true summit, and find they don't have the energy to get back down.

 

I don’t have much sympathy for people putting themselves and others at risk to make money off climbing. Death is an occupational hazard in the death zone.

 

Interestingly, the above photo makes it look not so technically challenging. Here's another shot of the same section of mountain. Note the two climbers on the ice at the top...

Yeah, I agree, but I'm definitely not going to judge the guy. He was 1000x the climber I will ever be. Who knows what I would have done had I been put in the same position? The one thing in common about these large scale tragedies is that they are rarely the result of a single mistake. A large number of mistakes, committed by a number of people, in a part of the world that doesn't forgive mistakes readily.

 

No worry about shooting them, the rich guys Dick Bass and Frank Wells have both died already.
Then, there's the discussion of what 7 summits. And then people doing the 7 2nd summits etc....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Summits

 

LOL the highest peak in Australia is about 2500 feet shorter than Mt. Baldy. That's quite a mountaineering accomplishment!

 

Thankfully, climbing morphed into an activity in which the means used to get somewhere has become as important (if not more) as the location. People spend months or weeks climbing El Cap, then they top out the cliff face and often descend without ever tagging the true summit, a five-minute walk away. Under the climbing umbrella, it's the polar opposite of guided (or guiding) mountaineer-types tagging a summit on fixed lines. Neither is easy, but one takes more skill and judgement; the other, more endurance and genes.

 

And pretty close to a driveup as I understand.

 

You mean Poopy People
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...of-poop/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3381d8211c31

 

I was just talking about this with my wife within the context of "risk versus reward". I can descend down a technical trail on my bike... or I can do it the exact same way, but without wearing a helmet. Chance of crashing is the same in either case, but the chance of injury increases dramatically without a helmet. I don't see how not wearing a helmet makes you a more skilled biker.

Likewise I struggle to see how free-climbing (with belay) is any less skillful than free-climbing without ropes. You haven't changed the difficulty of the climb - you have only changed the penalty for falling. "There are old climbers, and there are bold climbers, but there are few old bold climbers"

Within the context of Everest... the whole thing has gotten mildly amusing. Before the 2015 earthquake that shattered the Hillary Step, the Nepalese government was actually going to fix a ladder there There are usually fixed ropes all along the ridge at that location - though they are usually gone each winter and have to be re-affixed at the beginning of each (short) climbing season. Even with fixed ropes, plenty of people still go down for the count. Even this year, they lost a climber who "slipped off the trail" close to the summit.

 

This is just asinine. For many yrs I’ve enjoyed reading true stories about successful and unsuccessful Everest summits...this is nothing like a real summit IMHO. A good friend of mine Gerardo was a big peak climber and was paid or bartered with by the wealthy guys to take them up, show them the ropes and to carry their extra gear...lame!

 

Here's a related story from today. #1 on my list of "partners who I would not want to depend on for my life":

French climber rescued from Nanga Parbat summits Everest, Lhotse

Rescued climber angry that help came too late for ailing colleague

Seems like the only records she is intent on setting is records for the number of times getting rescued. Yes these are two different stories from two different climbing expeditions. She tells her partner help is on the way... leaves him... and then tells the rescue party his condition is too far gone.

 

Good points, Greg!

Two different kinds of "skill" may be at play. Ropeless is much more mental, of course. But for sure there is an art to placing gear under duress and moving around that rope and gear. I don't even try to compare roped to cordless. They appear quite similar, but the mental states are so far apart they seem like different activities.

 

A serious but probably dumb question....would it be possible for anybody to climb up there with a parachute in a pack (like BASE jumpers) and jump off?

 

Good thinking, Mike! Dean Potter was the first and only to deploy a chute off of a vertical climb that I'm aware of. There is a vid of it. It was billed as a last-ditch lifesaver, but it kind of looked like he didn't try that hard to stick the climbing and so got a pretty controlled launch. Proximity wingsuit flying did take him out eventually. Legendary slackliner and climber. RIP, Dark Wizard.

Many climbers have topped out with a rig or had it brought up. Then take the fast way down. Sometimes legally.

 

Not a dumb question. However at that altitude there is not enough air density for a regular parachute to work. You would need a parachute that is greater than 3x the volume that you would need at sea level, otherwise you would descend at too great a velocity. There is then the question of how much all that material would weigh. If you were jumping off a 29,000 foot 100% vertical cliff, it would work, because you could free-fall most of the way and then open the chute closer to sea level. Even Everest Base Camp is at 17,000 feet - which would mean less than half the air pressure at sea level. So you would need a huge chute - you would have to clear the flanks of the mountain - and you would have to avoid the hurricane force winds that are almost constantly blowing (Everest projects up into the jet stream). I think my highest altitude military jump was 3,000 feet Military HALO drops (high altitude, low opening) can be as high as 35,000 (on oxygen) but you are free-falling a long way. The world record recreation HALO jump is over 130,000 feet... just falling and falling and falling in a space suit on oxygen. You can do something called HAHO jumping (high altitude, high opening), but it is more or less a controlled free-fall at high elevation - you only slow down when you get to low elevation and the air density increases (so that wouldn't help you at Everest altitudes). It is fun to consider that there might be a theoretical way you could do a high altitude, high opening jump where you simply allowed the jet stream to whisk you off the mountain and out of the Himalayas entirely - landing somewhere in China at a lower elevation. Let me know how it works out

This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to conduct emergency rescues on high altitude mountains. High elevation turbine helicopters can fly as high as 25,000 feet - but the altitude at which they can hover is much lower - somewhere around 10,000 - 11,000 feet. If you are close to the ground you have the benefit of something called "ground effect" which increases that elevation to about 14,000 feet. Taking a helicopter into Everest Base Camp at 17,000 feet requires a special helicopter, a high speed low level approach, and balls of steel because you have to more or less flare at the last second and plop it onto the ground. No soft landings

 

The high peaks are seeing paraglide descents.

 

People suck.

 

Top of the food chain, baby! The planet is fine. Everything is natural. Now gimmie!

 

Haha...channeling George Carlin. Save the planet? The planet is fine – the people are fukked!



But to Bonsai's OP, the human landscape in climbing areas has become something of a turn-off as the climbing gym mentality and numbers, essentially, move outdoors. It's one reason I don't do much climbing. On your bike, when you run into the odd idiot, you pretty much just pedal away. In climbing, you could be stuck near some blubbering as$hole for days, and climbing is loaded with those types compared to mountain biking.

 

I'm not sure whether this looks cool or not Sailing around in a down sleeping bag on oxygen at 8000 meters... I know nothing about paragliding, so I have no idea if it would be possible to pack all of this gear up to the peak and then launch off of it.

 

You would not be in that position to begin with, because you don't have financial incentive to summit the mountain with clients in questionable conditions. Or you would make a sane decision and call off the photo op if conditions were unfavorable. I know those guides did heroic things to accommodate their clients, but end of day, they are there to make money. That's proven to be a bad influence on sound judgement. And FWIW, I have no respect for climbing ability – none whatsoever. I've known fantastic people who couldn't climb for sh¡t, and highly accomplished climbers who are terrible humans. But I do not mean to be callous about the loss of your family friend. My condolences to your families, Greg.

So true – overlapping conditions or events kill people like no other. Check out the summaries in Accidents in North American Mountaineering; one-cause incident summaries are few. I cringe when I think of the times I've caught myself in error, when, if one additional little dumb mistake happened, my friend or wife would be dealing with my body recovery. Yet I go still, for some reason.


Some interesting and provocative thoughts you've posted, Bons...sorry for the biking distraction, peeps. Happy Labor Day weekend!!