Ed Vestras rule: “Going up is optional, coming down is mandatory”
While I have ~ZERO~ desire to ever become a mountaineer, and for the vast majority of people who attempt these climbs are foolhardy at best, she knew going in what the dangers were, and all associated risks. We can pray for her, but to send anyone else without a good degree of certainty of rescue is also foolhardy.
Think, before you roam to an inaccessible point on the map, placing the lives of others at high risk.
Why? To break some kind of world record?
Even a motivated Rescue Crew does not owe you their lives.
It’s wrong to assume that they do
A similar predicament happens to scientists who explore the Antarctic regions.
I wonder if there are any drones that can operate at that altitude while lifting 160-ish pounds. Take her food, water, oxygen, until the weather breaks enough to hoist her out.
She got herself up there now she can get herself down.
Notes to self:
Don’t break a leg at 22,000 feet.
Stay home and watch a youtube video instead.
They don’t sign a release saying I’m climbing at my own risk- because coming down actually isn’t mandatory?
Then again, I recall ~20 years ago an article describing how the Pakistani military thwarted an attempt by an Indian squad to seize a peak along the disputed Kashmir border by strapping a pair of soldiers to the landing skids of a stripped-down helicopter and successfully getting them to the peak.
Messing around with rocky mountain trails, too little oxygen, and freezing cold temperatures is pretty darn dangerous. And if you go up a mountain so high that you need sherpas and base camps, it’s expensive, too. But people seem to flock to these risky adventures.
Looks like that’s one group that isn’t helped by the Climate Crisis hot temps. Mountain climbers.
That's -9.4F. I can see where that would be an issue for sure.
Does, AI, write this, slop?
My daughter just hiked to 20,000 feet in the Andes after spending two weeks at 11,000 feet. She hiked, mind you, not climbed, and rode a horse back down the trail.
I flew in to Colorado to see a friend living near Denver from back home in the midwest. The next day, we were at a mountain park hiking up two peaks that were over 12,000 feet at the top. I got to one with a lot of panting and nearly the top of the other, but I was panting like crazy and just not getting oxygen fast. I felt great, otherwise.
There was a last stretch that was maybe 100 feet of steep walking. I just could not make it. I was breathing and could get okay again, but moving up with effort was just not working for me. I could only stay or go down during those minutes. I told him I didn’t know why it was so rough, but that I just could not finish it.
Well, later, I looked it up and I likely had a form of altitude sickness. I never felt bad or uncomfortable, but breathing was just not working. Going down with my backpack was fine, but going down is controlled falling, which requires little effort.
I can’t imagine what 22,000 foot is like, but you sure had better acclimate a lot more than 12 hours, like I did. It apparently takes two weeks for red blood cells to make 12,000 - 13,000 work well for us. I had come from 600 foot above sea level, but was quite fit.
I believe there are still bodies on Mount Everest that are deemed unrecoverable.
High mountains and low brains don’t mix.
what’s an old woman doing climbing that to begin with!
Kyrgyzstan is on China’s NW border.