‘It Was Like a Zoo:’ Death on an Unruly, Overcrowded Everest

NY Times ^ | May 26, 2019 | Kai Schultz, Jeffrey Gettleman, Mujib Mashal and Bhadra Sharma

[Alberta's Child]

I don't think Cook reached the pole when he claimed he did. One of those guys from the Steger expedition pointed out that one of Cook's photos from his polar expedition showed a distinct land formation in the distant background ... in a place where Cook claimed he was miles from any land mass.

The guy speculated that Cook was actually somewhere not far off the coast of Ellesmere Island instead of standing within 50 miles of the North Pole.

[xp38]

There are a number of routes to the summit but obviously that is the easiest one of them. I read it’s called the yak track. If you didn’t want that lineup the other routes would be your teams alone. Of course a much harder climb would mean you would have to be a premier climber and not a tourist style one. Not that I’ve met any climbers but these days I’d be more impressed if a climber had summited K2. There are no tourists on K2 as it is a much harder climb and only a smidge below Everest in elevation.

[Hot Tabasco]

“Free Solo” is a real climbing event and documentary......

[Hot Tabasco]

There is no choice but to step over your body.

Shove them off the side of the path.......

[Maigrey]

At 30K feet? Not possible. The highest altitude "rescue" to date on Everest was about 18K feet - and that was with the pilot on O2 and only in the area for minutes at most.

The oxygen levels at 30k feet aren't there and the motors will stall out.

Mount Everest On May 14th, 2005, an Ecureuil/AStar AS 350 B3 helicopter operated by Eurocopter was reported to have landed on Mount Everest (29,035 feet). The landing is in dispute. The listed service ceiling of the rotorcraft is between 17 and 18 thousand feet, which is considerably short of the summit altitude. An unmanned high altitude helicopter is nearing completion. TGR Helicorp in New Zeland has designed the "Alpine Wasp" specifically for rescue evolutions on Everest. The machine's diesel engine will give it an operating ceiling in excess of 30,000 feet. Source1
Source2

[Hot Tabasco]

he plan has been met with mixed reaction from Everest climbers, worried about the influx of people at the peak of the mountain.

LOL! They have that already....

[Nuc 1.1]

But they didn’t conquer Everest, their guides did. Thy are just their passengers.

[Nuc 1.1]

Ah, a classic.

[moovova]

That’s hilarious. I’m gonna show that to the wife, and she doesn’t even like guns!

[jonascord]

She was coming down the hill,
Doing 90 miles an hour,
When the wheel on her bicycle broke!
She wound up in the grass,
With a sprocket up her a$$.
She was tickled to death by a spoke...

[sparklite2]

LOL

[Mr. Rabbit]

ROFL!

[rlmorel]

Hahahahahahaha! Hilarious! Nice job!

Hahaha...and still texting from her iPhone when she lands! Or Facetiming!

[sparklite2]

It won’t be me. I’m like the caterpillar who looked
up and saw a butterfly. He said, “You’ll never get
me up in one of those things!”

[sparklite2]

[rlmorel]

Excellent!

[Mom MD]

more deadly and probably more uncomfortable is high altitude cerebral edema. The brain swells and mashes itself against the inside of the skull. You did screaming with the worst headache of your life

[rlmorel]

A real feat was the Shackleton Expedition, after their ship was crushed, spent six months on steadily disintegrating ice floes, eating seals and penguins, until they had to climb into their boats and sail three days through open ocean to land on a small island. Realizing they would not survive there, they set up one of their boats and made an extraordinary 720 nautical mile voyage over open ocean only a month or so after the official end of the antarctic winter with only three chances at taking a celestial fix from a heaving small boat, and hit Georgia Island square on.

Impossible, but they did it.

I saw the actual boat they did it in at an exhibit at the Peabody-Essex Museum...just cannot believe it. That was a small boat.

Then they had to travel overland to the other side of the island, and traveled 32 miles over rugged, crevassed glacier with a carpenter’s adze, wool clothes, 50 feet of rope and wood screws put through the soles of their shoes.

An utterly remarkable endeavor.

[KamperKen]

"An utterly remarkable endeavor"

That still understates what is the greatest story of survival I've ever read. I've read both Alfred Lansing's "Endurance" and Shackleton's "South" and the story is touched upon in other books on polar exploration.

As I commented in another discussion thread, if Shackleton had taken dogs instead of ponies on the Nimrod expedition he would have been the first to make it to the south pole in 1908 or 1909.

I envy that you got to see the James Caird.

[21twelve]

“He even had to step around the body of a woman...”

“Hmf - $80,000 I pay and they don’t even clean up the bodies!”