Posted on 04/18/2014 4:37:13 AM PDT by jimbo123
An avalanche swept down a slope of Mount Everest on Friday along a route used to ascend the world's highest peak, killing at least 13 people in the mountain's deadliest disaster.
NBC News confirmed that all of the dead were Sherpa guides.
The guides had gone early in the morning to fix the ropes for hundreds of climbers when the avalanche hit them just below Camp 2 around 6:30 a.m. local time, Nepal Tourism Ministry official Krishna Lamsal told The Associated Press.
Tilak Ram Pandey, an official at the ministry's mountaineering department, later told Reuters that some other people were thought to be missing.
Hundreds of climbers, their guides and support guides had gathered at the base camp, gearing up for their final attempt to scale the 29,035-foot peak early next month when weather conditions get favorable. They have been setting up their camps at higher altitudes and guides fixing routes and ropes on the slopes ahead of the final ascend to the summit in May.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
It’s already been done. See IMDB.
To those people questioning why anyone would try to summit Everest, from what I’ve gathered, it’s a test of personal limits. You might as well ask why anyone would run a marathon or try to shoot par. There’s no LOGICAL reason for it, but that doesn’t diminish the motive. And I’m glad there are those men — and women — who challenge ease and demand to know their own potential.
I suppose, different strokes for different folks.
Generally speaking, the conditions on the summit push are so close to the edge of survival that it is not generally possible to launch rescue operations.
Also, people who have spent all that time and money to get to the summit ridge aren't anxious to abandon all that to help somebody in trouble. :)
There’s over 200 bodies still up in the “Death Zone”. Some are still relatively well preserved.
That alone would creep me out enough to not even want to try.
I am not sure what the price is now. However, about ten years ago I know a guy who paid $65K. That was the going rate back then.
The other major accomplishment was I believe Hillary and Nordeg did it without bottled O2.
!
The CBI, according to several men I’ve met from that era, was the “Bump on the Butt” of the Allied war effort. But it did pin down over a million Japanese troops in China that could have been thrown against the American island hopping campaign...
Plus helicopters can not fly above, I believe, Camp II which is about 24m’. Even there it is apparently not enough air to get much of any lift on the rotors. They tend to take off and almost fall down hill.
“I agree, I don’t get it, why would anyone care to do this climb?”
If you’ve ever been at a point in your life at which you feel lost and demoralized, based on issues that are out of your control, and you feel that you need to do something, anything, to put a punctuate mark in your life from which you can move on and reconsider, you can understand doing something like this.
I’m not saying that’s why most do it, but there is something about the enormity of the task, and that danger, that strips away the everyday concerns that are clouding your ability to see what’s important and what the real value of your life is. It’s good sometimes to be reminded just how small you are, and therefore how small some of the concerns you have are.
On the other hand, if you have a family and people who you are responsible for, it’s a bit irresponsible to do something like this just for an ‘adventure’.
The first team to summit without oxygen was Meissner and Habeler in 1978.
I strongly suspect a large percentage of those who do this are guys with too much money looking for bragging rights.
A more extreme version is climbing the highest point on each continent.
Everest is not, BTW, a particularly difficult climb technically. There are much harder ones. The difficulties of Everest mostly involve weather and altitude, which are quite sufficient to make it sufficiently dangerous for almost anybody.
I agree. I was just commenting about the more generic concept of feeling desperate in life and feeling like you need to do something desperate.
I’m not a technical climber, but I’ve heard what you said about Everest not being a technically difficult climb. Sounds like one of the biggest determinants of whether you make it or not is your personal physiology/biology and ability to acclimate to high altitude/low oxygen. Doesn’t matter if you are incredibly strong and fit. If you can’t acclimate, you can’t finish this climb.
Who would go to the expense and risk death to explore the New World, go to the moon or Mars, or find the cure for a deadly disease?
Who benefits when you stay home and pound asinine comments on a keyboard?
I’m sure there are some in the group you describe.
I’ve been on the fringes of the climbing world for some decades, and the general consensus of guides and other high-altitude climbers I’ve talked to or read on discussion boards is that “climbing” Everest attracts a high proportion of rich *ssholes relative to other high mountains.
For some of them their accomplishment is more like being towed up the mountain than climbing it.
As this episode shows, the danger is always there even for them.
Cost varies from $30k to $100k.
http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2014/04/17/everest-2014-avalanche-near-camp-1-sherpa-deaths/
He has a very good realtime blog about the yearly climb.
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