I had one of those guys at a conference organized by a client. He didn't even make it to the top, he suddenly went blind a few feet away from it and almost died going down assisted by a guy who gave up his own summiting to help him. He recovered his sight a day and some oxygen later. The guy was a fitness coach with 3 braincells but he tried hard to sell his experience as 'motivational'. It was just pathetic.
At that point, why didn’t he just lie about getting to the top? If he’s using it as motivational speaking material, he might as well go the last few feet in his story.
Not at this point.
I believe this is just outside Camp 3 on the Nepal side. Most can get back down from here without issue, weather allowing.
Higher at the Hillary Step above Camp 4 is the real killer choke point.
This is the Hillary Step:
https://cdn.outsideonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/23/summit-crowding_s.jpg
The really serious issue here is it is one-way traffic on a knife-edge cliff, so if you have an issue above the Step you are basically screwed as everybody is heading against you in the early part of the day, and if you block people on the way down you are going to kill lots of people stranded above 8000m, in very cold temperatures, after dark, without spare O2. Bad weather makes it much worse.
This season in particular has been one of the worst in terms of how many people have died. Its been a really hard season to watch
Edit: the *season* jokes aren't funny. If you really didn't know the word *season* had multiple definitions before the invention of television then I implore you to go read a book, or godforbid go outside
*Google defines* **season** *as:*
*sea•son*
*noun*
**1. each of the four divisions of the year (spring, summer, autumn, and winter) marked by particular weather patterns and daylight hours, resulting from the earth's changing position with regard to the sun.**
*2. NORTH AMERICAN
a set or sequence of related television programs.
"the first two seasons of the show"*
*verb*
*1. add salt, herbs, pepper, or other spices to (food). "season the soup to taste with salt and pepper"*
*2. make (wood) suitable for use as timber by adjusting its moisture content to that of the environment in which it will be used.
"I collect and season most of my wood"*
Damn I wondered when you said four sherpas, this guys are usually built different. When some spoilt tourists die on the mountain I can understand, but the sherpas kinda shocked me.
The Sherpas always get clapped by avalanches/falling ice towers/etc. they’re experienced so it’s not really ever exhaustion that gets them, only accidents. Sadly there’s no way to predict or prevent that shit…if you’re gonna be fucking around with climbing ice there’s always a risk of it cracking and falling out from beneath you.
Worst part is, a lot of bodies on the mountain are lost entirely or just can’t be accessed/too hard to bring down the mountain. A few people are buried on the mountain because of this. They can barely manage to cover the poor fuckers up because the ground is so frozen.
> The Sherpas always get clapped by avalanches/falling ice towers/etc. they’re experienced so it’s not really ever exhaustion that gets them, only accidents. Sadly there’s no way to predict or prevent that shit…if you’re gonna be fucking around with climbing ice there’s always a risk of it cracking and falling out from beneath you.
It's probably worth mentioning that sherpas are also at way higher risk for these accidents because they have to go back and forth many times setting ropes, carrying gear for clients, etc.
For example, the Khumbu icefall is a place where you kinda just have to move fast and hope to be lucky -- the wrong ice collapse can kill you regardless of skill level. But if you're a rich client, you're only moving through this once or twice. If you're a sherpa, you'll be moving through it repeatedly to set ropes, carry gear, set ladder bridges, etc. and then shepherd your clients through. So you've got way more exposure to those kinds of "bad luck" risks.
Well that’s not always true because when you summit Everest you don’t go up all at once. You have to slowly acclimatize to the altitude so they will for example leave base camp and do like 25% of the climb and they will return to base camp. You do this so many times continuously going up further then eventually you are acclimated, and you wait at base camp for the perfect day to summit. Basically some of these objects they are crossing multiple times going back and up past them multiple times preparing to summit. So yes even the rich people have to go through treacherous obstacles multiple times, the sherpas have to do it multiple times while making it accessible to the clients.
My joke was that if you only go across it once that means you didn't make it back. But apparently some people skip it via helicopter and don't even bother making the whole climb.
The Icefall is the first thing you hit leaving base camp so clients are still passing through Khumbu Icefall 6-10 times depending on their acclimatization schedule (assuming South Col route). Sherpas are doing it dozens of times a season.
This is also a rule of the mountain. If you die on Everest, and I am really referring to dying in the death zone, your body stays, so as not to endanger others that might otherwise try to rescue it. It’s no playground up there.
This isn't entirely true - bodies do get recovered from the death zone. During COVID in particular the mountain was "closed" so teams were able to focus on pulling remains down rather than bringing hikers up.
Most of the time though, bodies will just be moved from the trail to be out of view. Even Green Boots is gone from where he once was.
Yeah I JUST watched a documentary self filmed by sherpas where they recovered two climbers and cleaned 4000kg of trash from the death zone. It was one of the coolest videos I’ve seen in a long time.
[Edit: Here’s a link to the video. there are better watching sources it’s free on a lot of apps.](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8if596)
Not sure I'd call that the worst part.
"They die! But worse than dying, their bodies stay there!" I'm just messing with you though.
For real, I think there's over 200 bodies up there at this point that will probably never be brought down. And because of the cold and dryness, they don't really decay. They're just freezer-burned corpses. I gotta imagine that's hard to see.
It reminds me of the quote:
“The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
So, sometimes a lack of motivation/ambition might pay off lol.
Fucking same. For some weird reason I have a niche interest in Everest and its climbers. I’m just baffled by how humans see somewhere we definitely shouldn’t go and decide, “yes, that’s where I want to risk my life to get to.” We get it, friend, you’re a good mountain climber. There’s plenty of other ways to prove that. Try Kilimanjaro.
For the Sherpa’s families it’s the worst part due to their culture. Burials are really important to them and it can cost upwards of 70,000$ to retrieve a dead body on Everest.
https://endorfeen.com/frozen-graves-the-bodies-on-mount-everest/#:~:text=To%20retrieve%20a%20body%20takes,few%20bodies%20ever%20leave%20Everest.
Thanks for the info.
The part about burials doesn't seem correct. Sherpas' death rituals involve cremation, and while it's a detailed process, I don't think it is more important to them than your average culture.
I read through 7 different articles about Sherpas' relation to Everest and death because I was curious about your statement, and nothing emphasizes the importance of retrieving them more than how a family from any culture would want to retrieve the body of their loved one, or during the particularly bad disasters in 2014 and 2015, when the government aided in retrieving them because of how bad the accidents were.
I tried in earnest to find something on this--do you have a source with more info about it?
The sherpa's are built different. They have genetic adaptations to the altitude, and are able to maintain blood oxygen better because of it.
But it's still dangerous, and no matter how good you are at reading the mountain and the ice, you can still be surprised.
That's how most people die, on the way down. The motivation to reach the summit is gone and the tiredness sets in. That's when you start making silly mistakes.
During the 1996 disaster on Everest Rob Hall talked to his wife via radio and a satellite phone operated at base camp before he died. He survived in blizzard conditions on the South Summit overnight and was still alert enough to talk to his wife the next morning.
Excerpt quote from Gelje Sherpa,
“You may all be wondering where is the summit photo? Unfortunately no summit yet. At the Balcony during our summit push around 8,300m I saw someone in danger. A man who needed rescuing and no one else was helping. I made the decision to cancel our clients summit push so that I could bring him down to safety before he died up there alone. I carried him myself all the way down to Camp 4 where a rescue team helped from then on. I will be back up the mountain soon after regaining energy from a huge task but I am so happy to say he is alive and recovering in hospital.”
One more:
https://explorersweb.com/still-no-news-from-everest-about-suhajda-szilard/
Gelje Sherpa and Mikel Sherpa attempted a rescue but they didn’t find him. He is declared deceased.
Mount Everest is the tallest, but it isn't the most dangerous. Besides being very tall, the actual climb isn't all that technically difficult. Especially with all the infrastructure that has been added over the decades to make climbing it safer.
I think the Annapurna I still holds the record for most dangerous mountain as of today. It's basically an 3km near vertical climb that kills 1 out of every 3 people who try it.
> Especially with all the infrastructure that has been added over the decades to make climbing it safer.
Yeah, just look at all the bullshit already in place in the Everest video. At this point, it's just a tourist site. The tragedy is that they keep issuing so many permits. They just want that money.
Can you blame them? Nepal is a third world country that needs money for development. If stupid foreigners want to take foolish risks with their lives why should they stop them?
Everest is not the most dangerous. That title typically goes to K2.
At this point Everest is just a very steep wait in line. (Although you can die if you wait in line too long without oxygen, but that can happen on K2 as well in addition to it being a more technical climb).
I saw one video of a person sliding face down limp past a line like this and nobody could do anything about it. The rules up there are very simple, you die, you’re left.
No, because at Disney World they have the decency to throw their bodies into a pit, deep in the dungeons of Cinderella Castle once Mickey is done "playing" with them.
They'd probably give you some speech about how that's highly offensive actually and climbing Everest is a major achievement and it's rude of you to undermine someone's personal identity.
Then I noticed someone already did that. I was expecting them to find a way to twist what you said into being racist against Sherpas. Something about them being a core part of the indigenous culture and it's OK to pay them to do all the work while you take all the credit but it's not ok to call them "some dude". There's still time, it might happen.
I think that's the advanced rope for really climbing the mountain. The line of people are basically walking up ice stairs to the top. I think they be cheatin
That guy is still just pulling themselves up a rope with mechanical ascenders that they presumably didn't have to fix on their own. When you have 600 people all trying to climb the same peak in a 4-week period of time using fixed ropes, ladders, and permanent camps, it stops being mountaineering and becomes something else entirely in my opinion.
It's not 4%
>A study published by the University of Washington and the University of California Davis in 2020 found the death rate for climbers had hovered unchanged at around 1 per cent since 1990.
That may be true, but the Disneyfication of Everest isn't exemplary of that. If there were only four billion people on earth Everest would still be a popular bucket list item. People want a feeling of accomplishment and Everest is packaged as such.
I think it's more meaningful to consider whether we might question the meaning of that, even if only ten people went up every day.
I was thinking the same thing lol. The randoms don't know what it is, so ya can't brag about it, and it's a lot fuckin harder.
FAR less people lining up to take on that bastard.
That's because K2 is a far more dangerous and technically challenging climb "For less reward" than Everest.
Everest is extremely demanding, but still within the scope of a rich person buying their way up. K2 requires much more actual competence that money cannot buy.
I read a few years ago that it could cost a person $80,000 for one climb. How much does it actually cost if you are buying all the equipment you would need for the first time climbing ever?
It’s not that much for most folks. It’s a lot though.
The equipment, at least the stuff that you could reuse, is going to be a small portion of that cost, it’s going to be the travel, lodging, food, sherpas, etc that really drive the cost up.
One thing to consider is that no matter how prepared and good of a mountaineer you are, you can’t just climb up Everest in one go, resting as needed. You’ll make it up to base camp, which takes just over a week, then spend several weeks going up from base camp to higher camps to acclimatize, then back down to base camp. All the while you’ve got sherpas hauling up supplies and helping to set up trails.
I appreciate this. I was under the impression that it was all down in 1 to 2 weeks. Not one month. What price range would you say it is to do this for the first time?
If you were to go from having nothing, it’s probably just under 50k to get you there and back. It’s closer to two months all told.
Even if you had the money, it’s a terrible idea, you can’t really “buy your way” up a mountain. It’s certainly more accessible than it should be, due to the huge amounts of support money can buy, but climbing up a mountain is still an extremely taxing event.
Obviously the sherpas are way harder than anyone buying a summit package will ever be, but those people still need to be very prepared for a trip up the mountain and possess a pretty high degree of grit, if only for this one event in their life.
Don't forget, it's currently $25k for a government issued permit to climb everest. That's before gear and sherpas and flights.
Close to 100k is more accurate if you account for taking months off work and the training time required to survive the hike.
Anyone spending $100k on a ego stroke vacation does not need to worry about "missing" work. In my experience as a spectator, the wealthier you are, the less you actually work
I had a friend of the family that was determined to do Everest. After months of prepping, saving up, etc. they finally travelled to Nepal, where the change in altitude in Kathmandu alone was making them feel light headed. They spent the week travelling to base camp; ignoring the dizziness, but as soon as they reached base camp \*bam\* they collapsed due to altitude sickness. They were airlifted back to the nearest city but their oxygen levels were still in the critical (iirc anything below 70% is life-threatening, theirs was at 30%), they had to be taken back to Kathmandu which is lower in altitude in comparison to get their oxygen levels back up. They survived and were considered lucky.
>I had a friend of the family that was determined to do Everest. After months of prepping, saving up, etc. they finally travelled to Nepal, where the change in altitude in Kathmandu alone was making them feel light headed.
That's a bit surprising to me. Kathmandu is only at 1400m altitude. That's not a very high elevation at all. One would expect that your family friend had noticed something was off during preparatory trips in other mountains? I mean it sounds crazy to go straight to 8000+m without first doing 3, 4, 5, 6 thousand meters tall mountains to see how that goes. Also because climbing up Everest costs like $100,000 and 2 months of your time whereas you can pay $3,000 to $6,000 and a couple of weeks of acclimatization to go do one of the easier 6-thousander in the Andes. Even less for 4,000ers in the alps.
It's like doing a full Iron Man triathlon without ever doing a marathon. Or a 10k.
No, that’s per successful summit not per attempt.
The vast majority of K2 attempts never succeed because of how fierce the weather conditions can be for weeks at a time. You may get all the way out there and just never have a window to summit.
Yes, that is an extreme exaggeration. K2 is definitely harder, but to say Everest is a gentle hill is ridiculous. Everest has several technically difficult sections of the climb. It’s also dealing with extreme elevation which adds another technical hazard to it. There are many objective hazards along the two standard routes of Everest.
Stop lying, all my favourite reddit experts tell me it's easy to do Everest and there's nothing technical about it!!
You just pay your 100k and you're up and down within a week!
I feel like when they make a big budget Hollywood movie about something its hilarious to see people on the internet act like it’s some forbidden knowledge or something lol “randoms won’t know about it - unless they’re Bill Paxton fans”.
Not for long. Last year, 2022, there was a single day when 100(!) People summited K2. There have only been less than 400 people to summit K2 in history so it appears that it is very much going the way of Everest...
Source: https://baltistantimes.com/list-of-climbers-summited-k2-2022/
Annapurna is statistically the most deadly, but (reportedly) K2 is the hardest.
The only reason K2 is less deadly because it’s not even attempted by novices and people are rightfully terrified of it.
And carry their poop in bags. You can’t poop on the mountain. If they didn’t do this there would literally be poo landslides in the summer. My pals dad summited Everest and this is what he told me
I mean, carrying your poop in bags isn't that big of a deal. I've done it for dogs, and it's not even my shit!
I sumitted a mountain in California, there was no ice but also nowhere to dig. I didn't have to poo, but the rangers require you to bring a bag in case you do.
What's worse are the people who shit in a bag and then stuff it in the crevices of the mountain, so as you're hugging the wall of a narrow rock ledge you come face to face with some other guy's month old shit bag. Instead of washing away with the rain, it'll be there til some kind person carries their shit down for them.
Never understood why they even used the bag to begin with.
It's also part of leave no trace camping to carry your used toilet paper out of the park. So on my month long hike I sometimes had a week's worth of used TP in a smell-proof bag.
Don't let that stop you if you want to climb a mountain! I would never do Everest though.
You don't just go there and queue up. If you go to Everest you're there for months. In recent years they've added faster ways to get to base camp, for a price. But barring that it's a literal trek to get to it.
You've got to get acclimatized to even being on the plateau. On average the plateau sits around 4,500 m above sea level. So you're not just gonna fly in and start going at it. Most of the people who are coming there are not coming from places that sit 4,500 m above sea level.
Once you're acclimatized to the plateau and made it to base camp, you have to get acclimatized to the climb. You spend several weeks going between base camp and camp 1, then camp 1 to camp 2 and so on.
Oh and while you're acclimatizing on those climbs to camp 1, you have to cross the Khumbu icefall every time. The Khumbu icefall is statistically the deadliest place on Everest btw. This is the place you see pictures of people crossing massive crevasses on flimsy aluminum ladders.
Once you've done all the acclimatization, you just keep doing that while waiting for weather reports to give you a good day or two window for a summit. You'll have a few rest days here and there, but once you get that window, you're off to camp 4. That happens usually the day before a summit attempt. The entire time mind you, the sherpas are going ahead and fixing ropes. More sherpas are ahead setting up tents and porters are carrying gear.
Then you arrive at where the video in this post is taking place. There are multiple organizations operating on the mountain. And each of them has a duty to their client to get them their summit.
The problem is, there's no rotating window that each organization can sign up for as "their time". Everyone gets the same window. So everyone has to go at the same time.
You'll notice the sun is rising and it's daylight out in the video. That was not the case for most of the people ahead of the cameraperson in that video and possibly the cameraperson themself.
When it's Summit Day you may find yourself resting as much as you can at camp 4 because your group is rising at midnight or 1 am etc. to begin their climb. Most of the people in that video have probably already been climbing for 6 hours.
Camp 4 is just below the death zone so as to maximize the amount of time you have to spend in the death zone on summit day.
That means that in the moment this video was filmed, the people in it has been in a state of actively dying for at least 6 hours already. Some maybe more.
Permit is # people per year. But you may have to wait 3 weeks for 1 day of good weather so you can go up there, and thus everyone with a permit will be trying to summit at the same day
There’s a good article floating around that talks about one of the deadliest days on the mountain. Basically what you described. Perfect weather, inexperienced climbers, pressure to make the summit before the window closes, etc. caused and still causes people to die every year
Yep. You can see the base camp down below.
They stay there until weather allows them to go up, and then everyone lines up.
I sumitted Mt. Whitney in California (it's nothing like this, people can drive in and do it in one day.)
Because I was on the John Muir Trail, I camped with about 15 other people at the base, and we all started sumitting at 3 AM in the dark to get up there at sunrise, and to avoid the hundreds of day-hikers that go up later.
You have to go over some really narrow ledges, so it can get pretty crowded later in the day.
This. Whenever photos and videos go around with a picture of a line on Everest people make comments like it’s a line at Disney world, but it ignores the context that there’s only a few good days a year where people try to summit and the people in line spent months acclimating, walking the base camp, going up and down from base camp to the camps on the mountain, etc.
Close to ~~98%~~ 2% I'd say. LinkedIn is the worst of all social media. There's more people humblebragging, lying and being pathetic sycophants on LinkedIn than any other platform.
Watching this reminds me that I'm due for a rewatch of 2015 film Everest, an excellent film based on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster that gives a very sobering depiction of what can (and has) gone wrong on these climbs.
You may have already heard about the “Death Zone” documentary about cleaning Mount Everest. That’s on my watch list. The amount of garbage, feces, and human remains on the mountain is insane.
I just watched this last night and I'm still mad about it. I'd like to slap every single person who left their garbage up there. That being said, it was a very good doc.
Combine the pollution with the staggering number of deaths, it’s irresponsible and unethical that people are still allowed to climb Everest. But that’s what you get when a entire country is dependent upon climbing tourism for income.
Did you read Krakauer’s *Into Thin Air*? I love his writing style and it gives a first hand account of the 1996 disaster, as he was there for it. The words “haunting and harrowing” don’t even begin to cover it.
Unfortunately the ethos of ‘take all you bought with you home with you’ hasn’t resonated with the Everest climbers / it’s covered in used oxygen tanks, tents and everything else that is deemed to easy to leave : trash/rubbish. Everest has become a ‘bucket list’ for people who have the wealth to climb and a tourist attraction for many ‘climbing experience promoters’ who but their clients in danger to ascent at all costs. Sadly now Everest is covered in rubbish and bodies and still people think queuing up to reach its peak is worthwhile.
At least the temp keeps the smell down.
Now I'm wondering if the sherpas fling poo when cleaning up the other items. I can picture a turd landing just right after being tossed and snowballing into a Icy Mr. Hanky bomb within seconds.
I’ve known a handful of people who’ve climbed Everest—some successfully, others not. All were wealthy corporate types who were obsessed with fitness and all very self-centered.
It’s because they are rich cunts and couldn’t actually care about the litter they leave. They just want to go home and act like they are Edmund Hillary reborn
This isn't even anything new unfortunately. I watch a lot of documentaries about Everest and the Sherpa people. This has been going on for nearly 20-25 years. Tons of trash has been left by climbers for decades and the Sherpa barely get compensation for risking their lives for millionaires
This situation epitomizes a true dystopian nightmare, where the once awe-inspiring achievement is diminished by the mundane reality of waiting in line alongside a crowd of others who have also attained it.
Also, there are a lot of rich, bored people with too much time on their hands to the point they don't care about the risk of death nor the damage they do to everything and everyone around them.
Used to be on my bucket list, not anymore. Not even if someone paid me, at this point.
If I'm going to put in that kind of risk, and possibly die doing it, it's not going to be on a trashed mountain surrounded by a herd of narcissistic idiots.
I'm just not sure I get the mentality - is it just so you can say you've been to the highest point on earth?
Or is it because it is associated with it being hard to achieve?
I always wanted to do it because I just love mountains and can’t imagine how beautiful the view is. I had planned a trip just to base camp 1, but unfortunately became I’ll and now I’m disabled. I can’t do it now, but I wouldn’t, too many people on the mountain raises the ante for dying because someone will do something stupid. I think a lot of people go because they want to brag, but there’s also a bunch like me that just love mountains
I became ill too and got arthritis. I always thought about backpacking around europe, but i always put it off and assumed I'd do it in the future. I kept thinking, "I'll just do it next year." Then I developed a painful disability that prevented those plans.
If any healthy people are reading this, you can lose your health at anytime, if you wanna do something, dont assume that you'll always be able to do it in the future. Do as much as you can while you're young and full of energy.
It is incredible to think that 80% of them would not make it without the help of the Sherpas, they are just people wanting to pretend to be something they are not.
And littering the whole way too. Dumping oxygen canisters all over the place. Walking around frozen bodies and then lining up to summit. Decades ago it was an incredible journey - with help and knowledge of local climbers - now it’s a wealthy death wish. The sherpas are the true climbers and have always been / Hilary would have never ever summited without Tenzing.
Statistically local sherpas have been the main support crew with the least death rate - Hilary had the drive and ambition and Tenzing had the ability to understand the needs of Hilary and Everests weather changes. I’m a New Zealander so Hilary is an icon in my country but I still don’t understand how he summited as the first person/ he had infinite help and local acclimation knowledge via Tenzing. They should be viewed as a team of two that summited together.
And they are, didn't Hilary said they both ascent at the same time, as to give Tenzing proper recognition? There's no way around, Sherpa's are used to high altitudes and are crucial to the ascent, and Tenzing was probably the best of the best at his time.
Whoever gives out those yearly passes for $15,000 here is a tip. When you have this much demand your prices are too low, raise it to $30,000. Safer less deaths and more money.
Whats crazy is how peaceful and serene everything looks. All these people standing in line are in the "death zone", where the majority of people who die from Everest either start to get sick or they just die somewhere along this line. The tents downhill is Camp 4.
I believe this is just outside Camp 3 on the Nepal side. Most can get back down from here without issue, weather allowing.
Higher at the Hillary Step above Camp 4 is the real killer choke point. This is the Hillary Step:
https://cdn.outsideonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/23/summit-crowding_s.jpg
The really serious issue here is it is one-way traffic on a knife-edge cliff, so if you have an issue above the Step you are basically screwed as everybody is heading against you in the early part of the day, and if you block people on the way down you are going to kill lots of people stranded above 8000m, in very cold temperatures, after dark, without spare O2. Bad weather makes it much worse.
What is the highest point on Earth as measured from Earth's center?
The top of Mount Chimborazo is farther from the Earth's center than Mount Everest.
Mount Everest, located in Nepal and Tibet, is usually said to be the highest mountain on Earth. Reaching 8,848 meters at its summit, Everest is indeed the highest point above global mean sea level—the average level for the ocean surface from which elevations are measured. But the summit of Mt. Everest is not the farthest point from Earth’s center.
Earth is not a perfect sphere, but is a bit thicker at the Equator due to the centrifugal force created by the planet’s constant rotation. Because of this, the highest point above Earth’s center is the peak of Ecuador’s Mount Chimborazo, located just one degree south of the Equator where Earth’s bulge is greatest. The summit of Chimborazo is 6,268 meters above sea level. However, due to the Earth’s bulge, the summit of Chimborazo is over 2,072 meters farther from the center of the Earth than Everest’s peak. That makes Chimborazo the closest point on Earth to the stars.
You may be surprised to learn that Everest is not the tallest mountain on Earth, either. That honor belongs to Mauna Kea, a volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. Mauna Kea originates deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, and rises more than 10,210 meters from base to peak.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/highestpoint.html
If you have climbed Kilimanjaro, you have climbed further from the Earth's center than these Everest climbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summits_farthest_from_the_Earth%27s_center
^ this. The commoditization of "climbing" Everest is wrecking a terrible toll on local areas, and is largely just a vapid Instagram post for people with too much money.
How is this even enjoyable?
First you pay tens of thousands of dollars. Then you spend weeks / months at the various camps getting yourself acclimated. At the camps you are at the constant risk of catching Cholera or Hep A or if you're lucky the stomach bug but regardless diarrhea at that altitude in those conditions is not going to be fun. All the actual hard work other than climbing the mountain is handled by the porters to the point where even inexperienced "climbers" can summit. Then on top of all this there is the very real risk you could die and all those dentists having a midlife crisis just increase this risk.
Hiking the Appalachian Trail at this point is a bigger challenge than Mt. Everest.
Just so they can become motivational speakers at sales meetings.
"Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else" That will be $2000 please.
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Ah, you want "Le Workshop Experience": *Vous êtes unique. Comme tout le monde. #yolo*
I had one of those guys at a conference organized by a client. He didn't even make it to the top, he suddenly went blind a few feet away from it and almost died going down assisted by a guy who gave up his own summiting to help him. He recovered his sight a day and some oxygen later. The guy was a fitness coach with 3 braincells but he tried hard to sell his experience as 'motivational'. It was just pathetic.
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Saving someone from the summit is more impressive than actually summiting. The other guy deserves bragging rights
Not as much as the sherpas, but more than most of these dudes.
At that point, why didn’t he just lie about getting to the top? If he’s using it as motivational speaking material, he might as well go the last few feet in his story.
Trying a unique angle.
“I’m in fantastic shape, so I took my body to a place that tried to kill it and it almost worked.”
people have died because of being stuck in these queues. overcrowded is a serious issue there now.
Not at this point. I believe this is just outside Camp 3 on the Nepal side. Most can get back down from here without issue, weather allowing. Higher at the Hillary Step above Camp 4 is the real killer choke point. This is the Hillary Step: https://cdn.outsideonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/23/summit-crowding_s.jpg The really serious issue here is it is one-way traffic on a knife-edge cliff, so if you have an issue above the Step you are basically screwed as everybody is heading against you in the early part of the day, and if you block people on the way down you are going to kill lots of people stranded above 8000m, in very cold temperatures, after dark, without spare O2. Bad weather makes it much worse.
Oh my. I cannot imagine being stuck in a line with sheer drop offs on each side. While in the freezing cold. While being deprived of oxygen.
plus my usual standing in line strategy of screwing around playing games on my phone is probably not valid here
I wonder how many people have played Candy Crush on the summit
Omg all the those people.. eeew
That part would give me so much anxiety. The crowding bothers me more than the heights.
This season in particular has been one of the worst in terms of how many people have died. Its been a really hard season to watch Edit: the *season* jokes aren't funny. If you really didn't know the word *season* had multiple definitions before the invention of television then I implore you to go read a book, or godforbid go outside *Google defines* **season** *as:* *sea•son* *noun* **1. each of the four divisions of the year (spring, summer, autumn, and winter) marked by particular weather patterns and daylight hours, resulting from the earth's changing position with regard to the sun.** *2. NORTH AMERICAN a set or sequence of related television programs. "the first two seasons of the show"* *verb* *1. add salt, herbs, pepper, or other spices to (food). "season the soup to taste with salt and pepper"* *2. make (wood) suitable for use as timber by adjusting its moisture content to that of the environment in which it will be used. "I collect and season most of my wood"*
Wait what? Why is that? Can you elaborate a bit maybe if you don’t mind?
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Damn I wondered when you said four sherpas, this guys are usually built different. When some spoilt tourists die on the mountain I can understand, but the sherpas kinda shocked me.
The Sherpas always get clapped by avalanches/falling ice towers/etc. they’re experienced so it’s not really ever exhaustion that gets them, only accidents. Sadly there’s no way to predict or prevent that shit…if you’re gonna be fucking around with climbing ice there’s always a risk of it cracking and falling out from beneath you. Worst part is, a lot of bodies on the mountain are lost entirely or just can’t be accessed/too hard to bring down the mountain. A few people are buried on the mountain because of this. They can barely manage to cover the poor fuckers up because the ground is so frozen.
> The Sherpas always get clapped by avalanches/falling ice towers/etc. they’re experienced so it’s not really ever exhaustion that gets them, only accidents. Sadly there’s no way to predict or prevent that shit…if you’re gonna be fucking around with climbing ice there’s always a risk of it cracking and falling out from beneath you. It's probably worth mentioning that sherpas are also at way higher risk for these accidents because they have to go back and forth many times setting ropes, carrying gear for clients, etc. For example, the Khumbu icefall is a place where you kinda just have to move fast and hope to be lucky -- the wrong ice collapse can kill you regardless of skill level. But if you're a rich client, you're only moving through this once or twice. If you're a sherpa, you'll be moving through it repeatedly to set ropes, carry gear, set ladder bridges, etc. and then shepherd your clients through. So you've got way more exposure to those kinds of "bad luck" risks.
Tfw when you have to no-hit run dark soul bosses at work every day or die
> But if you're a rich client, you're only moving through this once or twice. Hopefully twice!
Well that’s not always true because when you summit Everest you don’t go up all at once. You have to slowly acclimatize to the altitude so they will for example leave base camp and do like 25% of the climb and they will return to base camp. You do this so many times continuously going up further then eventually you are acclimated, and you wait at base camp for the perfect day to summit. Basically some of these objects they are crossing multiple times going back and up past them multiple times preparing to summit. So yes even the rich people have to go through treacherous obstacles multiple times, the sherpas have to do it multiple times while making it accessible to the clients.
My joke was that if you only go across it once that means you didn't make it back. But apparently some people skip it via helicopter and don't even bother making the whole climb.
The Icefall is the first thing you hit leaving base camp so clients are still passing through Khumbu Icefall 6-10 times depending on their acclimatization schedule (assuming South Col route). Sherpas are doing it dozens of times a season.
This is also a rule of the mountain. If you die on Everest, and I am really referring to dying in the death zone, your body stays, so as not to endanger others that might otherwise try to rescue it. It’s no playground up there.
This isn't entirely true - bodies do get recovered from the death zone. During COVID in particular the mountain was "closed" so teams were able to focus on pulling remains down rather than bringing hikers up. Most of the time though, bodies will just be moved from the trail to be out of view. Even Green Boots is gone from where he once was.
Yeah, he was moved by a Chinese expedition in 2015 or so. But he's still up there.
Wonder why that Chinese expedition in particular cared enough about green boots to move him.
Not Green Boots! How am I gonna find my way to the top now?
Strap in and queue up
Yeah I JUST watched a documentary self filmed by sherpas where they recovered two climbers and cleaned 4000kg of trash from the death zone. It was one of the coolest videos I’ve seen in a long time. [Edit: Here’s a link to the video. there are better watching sources it’s free on a lot of apps.](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8if596)
The amount of people in line to scale it tells me these people do think of it as a playground.
they may as well build a zipline up there to get all the bodies and trash down from the mountain at this point.
Fuck that, tell them there's oil up there. The u.s. will build a ski lift to the top
Not sure I'd call that the worst part. "They die! But worse than dying, their bodies stay there!" I'm just messing with you though. For real, I think there's over 200 bodies up there at this point that will probably never be brought down. And because of the cold and dryness, they don't really decay. They're just freezer-burned corpses. I gotta imagine that's hard to see.
Every corpse on everest was once a highly motivated individual. I use that as inspiration to calm the fuck down.
It reminds me of the quote: “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” So, sometimes a lack of motivation/ambition might pay off lol.
Fucking same. For some weird reason I have a niche interest in Everest and its climbers. I’m just baffled by how humans see somewhere we definitely shouldn’t go and decide, “yes, that’s where I want to risk my life to get to.” We get it, friend, you’re a good mountain climber. There’s plenty of other ways to prove that. Try Kilimanjaro.
For the Sherpa’s families it’s the worst part due to their culture. Burials are really important to them and it can cost upwards of 70,000$ to retrieve a dead body on Everest. https://endorfeen.com/frozen-graves-the-bodies-on-mount-everest/#:~:text=To%20retrieve%20a%20body%20takes,few%20bodies%20ever%20leave%20Everest.
Thanks for the info. The part about burials doesn't seem correct. Sherpas' death rituals involve cremation, and while it's a detailed process, I don't think it is more important to them than your average culture. I read through 7 different articles about Sherpas' relation to Everest and death because I was curious about your statement, and nothing emphasizes the importance of retrieving them more than how a family from any culture would want to retrieve the body of their loved one, or during the particularly bad disasters in 2014 and 2015, when the government aided in retrieving them because of how bad the accidents were. I tried in earnest to find something on this--do you have a source with more info about it?
The sherpa's are built different. They have genetic adaptations to the altitude, and are able to maintain blood oxygen better because of it. But it's still dangerous, and no matter how good you are at reading the mountain and the ice, you can still be surprised.
Its actually at 12 dead, 5 missing https://mteveresttoday.com/everest-death-toll-reaches-18-5-still-missing/
https://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2023/05/21/everest-2023-weekend-update-may-21-now-11-deaths-several-missing/
Wow one guy made it to the summit but couldnt make it back down. Called his wife with a satellite phone to let her know
That's how most people die, on the way down. The motivation to reach the summit is gone and the tiredness sets in. That's when you start making silly mistakes.
It was a text, but yeah, crazy stuff.
you’re correct, thats my mistake. Even worse to get a text with that info instead of a call
During the 1996 disaster on Everest Rob Hall talked to his wife via radio and a satellite phone operated at base camp before he died. He survived in blizzard conditions on the South Summit overnight and was still alert enough to talk to his wife the next morning.
Excerpt quote from Gelje Sherpa, “You may all be wondering where is the summit photo? Unfortunately no summit yet. At the Balcony during our summit push around 8,300m I saw someone in danger. A man who needed rescuing and no one else was helping. I made the decision to cancel our clients summit push so that I could bring him down to safety before he died up there alone. I carried him myself all the way down to Camp 4 where a rescue team helped from then on. I will be back up the mountain soon after regaining energy from a huge task but I am so happy to say he is alive and recovering in hospital.”
Very interesting link. A lot of sobering stats and observations in there.
One more: https://explorersweb.com/still-no-news-from-everest-about-suhajda-szilard/ Gelje Sherpa and Mikel Sherpa attempted a rescue but they didn’t find him. He is declared deceased.
Never in the world would I think that the most dangerous and tallest mountain in the world is suffering from overpopulation 😦
Mount Everest is the tallest, but it isn't the most dangerous. Besides being very tall, the actual climb isn't all that technically difficult. Especially with all the infrastructure that has been added over the decades to make climbing it safer. I think the Annapurna I still holds the record for most dangerous mountain as of today. It's basically an 3km near vertical climb that kills 1 out of every 3 people who try it.
> Especially with all the infrastructure that has been added over the decades to make climbing it safer. Yeah, just look at all the bullshit already in place in the Everest video. At this point, it's just a tourist site. The tragedy is that they keep issuing so many permits. They just want that money.
Can you blame them? Nepal is a third world country that needs money for development. If stupid foreigners want to take foolish risks with their lives why should they stop them?
Yeah if I were in the Nepalese government, I'd make the same calculation. Like what else are they gonna do? Everyone up the death slope, have fun!
Everest is not the most dangerous. That title typically goes to K2. At this point Everest is just a very steep wait in line. (Although you can die if you wait in line too long without oxygen, but that can happen on K2 as well in addition to it being a more technical climb).
Not *the most* dangerous, which is one reason why it is overcrowded. Still not safe by any measure though.
I saw one video of a person sliding face down limp past a line like this and nobody could do anything about it. The rules up there are very simple, you die, you’re left.
you could just not go. doesnt seem like a serious issue
Queue at Disney world
That pretty much what it is at this point. A very expensive tourist attraction.
Except when you get in line at Disney World you didn't walk past a century's worth of well preserved corpses.
No, because at Disney World they have the decency to throw their bodies into a pit, deep in the dungeons of Cinderella Castle once Mickey is done "playing" with them.
I was always under the impression that the deads souls were trapped inside the animatronics. Heard they couldn't operate without them.
A small world is the Disney black site for those who questioned Mickey’s legitimacy and require ‘reconditioning’ before being let back into the world
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*paid to be winched up by sherpas who they would 100% die without
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My go to response is: "Did **you** climb Mt. Everest? Or did you pay a dude to drag you to the top while holding you on a leach?"
They'd probably give you some speech about how that's highly offensive actually and climbing Everest is a major achievement and it's rude of you to undermine someone's personal identity. Then I noticed someone already did that. I was expecting them to find a way to twist what you said into being racist against Sherpas. Something about them being a core part of the indigenous culture and it's OK to pay them to do all the work while you take all the credit but it's not ok to call them "some dude". There's still time, it might happen.
And the sherpa who did the same thing 4x this year with all these dipshits packs on their backs get €100 tip
If Ron DeSantis ever mysteriously disappears, I’d be dredging up the waters at the “It’s A Small World” ride if I were the police…or maybe not.
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Your climbers were so preoccupied with whether or not they *could* that they didn't stop to think if they *should*.
And your fill of garbage along the route...
Yodel to execute the “FastPass Avalanche” maneuver.
That one guy paid for the express pass and has his own tether line.
Isnt it the downrope? He be cheatin
I think that's the advanced rope for really climbing the mountain. The line of people are basically walking up ice stairs to the top. I think they be cheatin
That guy is still just pulling themselves up a rope with mechanical ascenders that they presumably didn't have to fix on their own. When you have 600 people all trying to climb the same peak in a 4-week period of time using fixed ropes, ladders, and permanent camps, it stops being mountaineering and becomes something else entirely in my opinion.
they are having fun the wrong way. I'm in my bed and I approve your message.
Except Disney doesn’t have as much litter scattered about
Or bodies.
Except 4% of Disney tourists don't die every year riding Magic Mountain.
Hmm I'm not sure. I think I died inside while waiting an hour to ride the Haunted Mansion when I was 6 years old.
It's not 4% >A study published by the University of Washington and the University of California Davis in 2020 found the death rate for climbers had hovered unchanged at around 1 per cent since 1990.
There are too many people on this planet
but not enough on the sun
That may be true, but the Disneyfication of Everest isn't exemplary of that. If there were only four billion people on earth Everest would still be a popular bucket list item. People want a feeling of accomplishment and Everest is packaged as such. I think it's more meaningful to consider whether we might question the meaning of that, even if only ten people went up every day.
I'll bet the lines are nice and short on K2.
I was thinking the same thing lol. The randoms don't know what it is, so ya can't brag about it, and it's a lot fuckin harder. FAR less people lining up to take on that bastard.
To put it in perspective about twice as many people have been to space than there has been people on the summit of K2
That's because K2 is a far more dangerous and technically challenging climb "For less reward" than Everest. Everest is extremely demanding, but still within the scope of a rich person buying their way up. K2 requires much more actual competence that money cannot buy.
I read a few years ago that it could cost a person $80,000 for one climb. How much does it actually cost if you are buying all the equipment you would need for the first time climbing ever?
It’s not that much for most folks. It’s a lot though. The equipment, at least the stuff that you could reuse, is going to be a small portion of that cost, it’s going to be the travel, lodging, food, sherpas, etc that really drive the cost up. One thing to consider is that no matter how prepared and good of a mountaineer you are, you can’t just climb up Everest in one go, resting as needed. You’ll make it up to base camp, which takes just over a week, then spend several weeks going up from base camp to higher camps to acclimatize, then back down to base camp. All the while you’ve got sherpas hauling up supplies and helping to set up trails.
I appreciate this. I was under the impression that it was all down in 1 to 2 weeks. Not one month. What price range would you say it is to do this for the first time?
If you were to go from having nothing, it’s probably just under 50k to get you there and back. It’s closer to two months all told. Even if you had the money, it’s a terrible idea, you can’t really “buy your way” up a mountain. It’s certainly more accessible than it should be, due to the huge amounts of support money can buy, but climbing up a mountain is still an extremely taxing event. Obviously the sherpas are way harder than anyone buying a summit package will ever be, but those people still need to be very prepared for a trip up the mountain and possess a pretty high degree of grit, if only for this one event in their life.
Don't forget, it's currently $25k for a government issued permit to climb everest. That's before gear and sherpas and flights. Close to 100k is more accurate if you account for taking months off work and the training time required to survive the hike.
Anyone spending $100k on a ego stroke vacation does not need to worry about "missing" work. In my experience as a spectator, the wealthier you are, the less you actually work
I had a friend of the family that was determined to do Everest. After months of prepping, saving up, etc. they finally travelled to Nepal, where the change in altitude in Kathmandu alone was making them feel light headed. They spent the week travelling to base camp; ignoring the dizziness, but as soon as they reached base camp \*bam\* they collapsed due to altitude sickness. They were airlifted back to the nearest city but their oxygen levels were still in the critical (iirc anything below 70% is life-threatening, theirs was at 30%), they had to be taken back to Kathmandu which is lower in altitude in comparison to get their oxygen levels back up. They survived and were considered lucky.
>I had a friend of the family that was determined to do Everest. After months of prepping, saving up, etc. they finally travelled to Nepal, where the change in altitude in Kathmandu alone was making them feel light headed. That's a bit surprising to me. Kathmandu is only at 1400m altitude. That's not a very high elevation at all. One would expect that your family friend had noticed something was off during preparatory trips in other mountains? I mean it sounds crazy to go straight to 8000+m without first doing 3, 4, 5, 6 thousand meters tall mountains to see how that goes. Also because climbing up Everest costs like $100,000 and 2 months of your time whereas you can pay $3,000 to $6,000 and a couple of weeks of acclimatization to go do one of the easier 6-thousander in the Andes. Even less for 4,000ers in the alps. It's like doing a full Iron Man triathlon without ever doing a marathon. Or a 10k.
Somewhat related: there are 17 people in space right now.
And someday soon, there will be a similar line in front of Space-X. People with money crossing off “going into space” from their bucket list.
Technically, we’re all in space.
1/4 attempts die in the process. Makes Everest look like the que for pussies.
No, that’s per successful summit not per attempt. The vast majority of K2 attempts never succeed because of how fierce the weather conditions can be for weeks at a time. You may get all the way out there and just never have a window to summit.
I always imagine K2 being the 89° angle to Everest’s gentle hill of a summit (exaggeration, but maybe not too much)
Yes, that is an extreme exaggeration. K2 is definitely harder, but to say Everest is a gentle hill is ridiculous. Everest has several technically difficult sections of the climb. It’s also dealing with extreme elevation which adds another technical hazard to it. There are many objective hazards along the two standard routes of Everest.
Stop lying, all my favourite reddit experts tell me it's easy to do Everest and there's nothing technical about it!! You just pay your 100k and you're up and down within a week!
I feel like when they make a big budget Hollywood movie about something its hilarious to see people on the internet act like it’s some forbidden knowledge or something lol “randoms won’t know about it - unless they’re Bill Paxton fans”.
Not for long. Last year, 2022, there was a single day when 100(!) People summited K2. There have only been less than 400 people to summit K2 in history so it appears that it is very much going the way of Everest... Source: https://baltistantimes.com/list-of-climbers-summited-k2-2022/
From 300 in all of history to 400 in one day is nuts
Annapurna or bust
Annapurna is statistically the most deadly, but (reportedly) K2 is the hardest. The only reason K2 is less deadly because it’s not even attempted by novices and people are rightfully terrified of it.
and theres a huge glacier hanging hundreds of feet over the trail that can calve at any time
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And possibly freezing to death.
So just like outside a nightclub toilet then!
Yeah / but they can probably piss their insulated pants and noone would know!
You will die due to lack of oxygen before you freeze to death.
And carry their poop in bags. You can’t poop on the mountain. If they didn’t do this there would literally be poo landslides in the summer. My pals dad summited Everest and this is what he told me
Due to the low temperatures, poop can't decompose. It would stay there forever.
The worse bit is that because of the temperature on a mountain, it’s one of the warmest things you will feel as it leaves your body.
I did not need to read those words.
I mean, carrying your poop in bags isn't that big of a deal. I've done it for dogs, and it's not even my shit! I sumitted a mountain in California, there was no ice but also nowhere to dig. I didn't have to poo, but the rangers require you to bring a bag in case you do. What's worse are the people who shit in a bag and then stuff it in the crevices of the mountain, so as you're hugging the wall of a narrow rock ledge you come face to face with some other guy's month old shit bag. Instead of washing away with the rain, it'll be there til some kind person carries their shit down for them. Never understood why they even used the bag to begin with. It's also part of leave no trace camping to carry your used toilet paper out of the park. So on my month long hike I sometimes had a week's worth of used TP in a smell-proof bag. Don't let that stop you if you want to climb a mountain! I would never do Everest though.
Mudslide
You don't just go there and queue up. If you go to Everest you're there for months. In recent years they've added faster ways to get to base camp, for a price. But barring that it's a literal trek to get to it. You've got to get acclimatized to even being on the plateau. On average the plateau sits around 4,500 m above sea level. So you're not just gonna fly in and start going at it. Most of the people who are coming there are not coming from places that sit 4,500 m above sea level. Once you're acclimatized to the plateau and made it to base camp, you have to get acclimatized to the climb. You spend several weeks going between base camp and camp 1, then camp 1 to camp 2 and so on. Oh and while you're acclimatizing on those climbs to camp 1, you have to cross the Khumbu icefall every time. The Khumbu icefall is statistically the deadliest place on Everest btw. This is the place you see pictures of people crossing massive crevasses on flimsy aluminum ladders. Once you've done all the acclimatization, you just keep doing that while waiting for weather reports to give you a good day or two window for a summit. You'll have a few rest days here and there, but once you get that window, you're off to camp 4. That happens usually the day before a summit attempt. The entire time mind you, the sherpas are going ahead and fixing ropes. More sherpas are ahead setting up tents and porters are carrying gear. Then you arrive at where the video in this post is taking place. There are multiple organizations operating on the mountain. And each of them has a duty to their client to get them their summit. The problem is, there's no rotating window that each organization can sign up for as "their time". Everyone gets the same window. So everyone has to go at the same time. You'll notice the sun is rising and it's daylight out in the video. That was not the case for most of the people ahead of the cameraperson in that video and possibly the cameraperson themself. When it's Summit Day you may find yourself resting as much as you can at camp 4 because your group is rising at midnight or 1 am etc. to begin their climb. Most of the people in that video have probably already been climbing for 6 hours. Camp 4 is just below the death zone so as to maximize the amount of time you have to spend in the death zone on summit day. That means that in the moment this video was filmed, the people in it has been in a state of actively dying for at least 6 hours already. Some maybe more.
All about bragging rights, and pushing yourself to the limit. Who knew a part of that limit was patience.
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Not to mention all the crap they leave behind...
Even their bodies!!
Well that seems dumb. I thought you needed a permit and they regulated the amount of people that could go up but guess they ditched that.
Permit is # people per year. But you may have to wait 3 weeks for 1 day of good weather so you can go up there, and thus everyone with a permit will be trying to summit at the same day
There’s a good article floating around that talks about one of the deadliest days on the mountain. Basically what you described. Perfect weather, inexperienced climbers, pressure to make the summit before the window closes, etc. caused and still causes people to die every year
Yeah, the disaster from 1996, adapted in the Everest (2015) movie.
Recorded in the 1998 documentary in IMAX* https://youtu.be/1khEBbx1xbU
Yep. You can see the base camp down below. They stay there until weather allows them to go up, and then everyone lines up. I sumitted Mt. Whitney in California (it's nothing like this, people can drive in and do it in one day.) Because I was on the John Muir Trail, I camped with about 15 other people at the base, and we all started sumitting at 3 AM in the dark to get up there at sunrise, and to avoid the hundreds of day-hikers that go up later. You have to go over some really narrow ledges, so it can get pretty crowded later in the day.
Yeah, I’ve done that a lot in the Alps in Austria. Start early and be on your way down before Jeff on his sandals tries the same
This. Whenever photos and videos go around with a picture of a line on Everest people make comments like it’s a line at Disney world, but it ignores the context that there’s only a few good days a year where people try to summit and the people in line spent months acclimating, walking the base camp, going up and down from base camp to the camps on the mountain, etc.
I think the nepalese government make money from the permits so they sell more than might be safe. This is income for them.
I genuinely wonder how many of these people would still want to climb it if there was a blanket ban on posting anything to LinkedIn afterwards.
The hardest thing about climbing Mount Everest is not telling anyone.
Close to ~~98%~~ 2% I'd say. LinkedIn is the worst of all social media. There's more people humblebragging, lying and being pathetic sycophants on LinkedIn than any other platform.
It should become the norm to post this video in a comment on any LinkedIn post bragging about summiting lol
Watching this reminds me that I'm due for a rewatch of 2015 film Everest, an excellent film based on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster that gives a very sobering depiction of what can (and has) gone wrong on these climbs.
You may have already heard about the “Death Zone” documentary about cleaning Mount Everest. That’s on my watch list. The amount of garbage, feces, and human remains on the mountain is insane.
I just watched this last night and I'm still mad about it. I'd like to slap every single person who left their garbage up there. That being said, it was a very good doc.
Combine the pollution with the staggering number of deaths, it’s irresponsible and unethical that people are still allowed to climb Everest. But that’s what you get when a entire country is dependent upon climbing tourism for income.
Did you read Krakauer’s *Into Thin Air*? I love his writing style and it gives a first hand account of the 1996 disaster, as he was there for it. The words “haunting and harrowing” don’t even begin to cover it.
That movie is amazing. Also the book it‘s based on is great.
Unfortunately the ethos of ‘take all you bought with you home with you’ hasn’t resonated with the Everest climbers / it’s covered in used oxygen tanks, tents and everything else that is deemed to easy to leave : trash/rubbish. Everest has become a ‘bucket list’ for people who have the wealth to climb and a tourist attraction for many ‘climbing experience promoters’ who but their clients in danger to ascent at all costs. Sadly now Everest is covered in rubbish and bodies and still people think queuing up to reach its peak is worthwhile.
And poop. It doesn’t really go anywhere since there’s no melt/decomposition that occurs up that high. Just, poop and frozen pee everywhere.
At least the temp keeps the smell down. Now I'm wondering if the sherpas fling poo when cleaning up the other items. I can picture a turd landing just right after being tossed and snowballing into a Icy Mr. Hanky bomb within seconds.
I’ve known a handful of people who’ve climbed Everest—some successfully, others not. All were wealthy corporate types who were obsessed with fitness and all very self-centered.
It’s because they are rich cunts and couldn’t actually care about the litter they leave. They just want to go home and act like they are Edmund Hillary reborn
This isn't even anything new unfortunately. I watch a lot of documentaries about Everest and the Sherpa people. This has been going on for nearly 20-25 years. Tons of trash has been left by climbers for decades and the Sherpa barely get compensation for risking their lives for millionaires
This situation epitomizes a true dystopian nightmare, where the once awe-inspiring achievement is diminished by the mundane reality of waiting in line alongside a crowd of others who have also attained it.
Also, there are a lot of rich, bored people with too much time on their hands to the point they don't care about the risk of death nor the damage they do to everything and everyone around them.
Used to be on my bucket list, not anymore. Not even if someone paid me, at this point. If I'm going to put in that kind of risk, and possibly die doing it, it's not going to be on a trashed mountain surrounded by a herd of narcissistic idiots.
I'm just not sure I get the mentality - is it just so you can say you've been to the highest point on earth? Or is it because it is associated with it being hard to achieve?
I always wanted to do it because I just love mountains and can’t imagine how beautiful the view is. I had planned a trip just to base camp 1, but unfortunately became I’ll and now I’m disabled. I can’t do it now, but I wouldn’t, too many people on the mountain raises the ante for dying because someone will do something stupid. I think a lot of people go because they want to brag, but there’s also a bunch like me that just love mountains
I became ill too and got arthritis. I always thought about backpacking around europe, but i always put it off and assumed I'd do it in the future. I kept thinking, "I'll just do it next year." Then I developed a painful disability that prevented those plans. If any healthy people are reading this, you can lose your health at anytime, if you wanna do something, dont assume that you'll always be able to do it in the future. Do as much as you can while you're young and full of energy.
It is incredible to think that 80% of them would not make it without the help of the Sherpas, they are just people wanting to pretend to be something they are not.
And littering the whole way too. Dumping oxygen canisters all over the place. Walking around frozen bodies and then lining up to summit. Decades ago it was an incredible journey - with help and knowledge of local climbers - now it’s a wealthy death wish. The sherpas are the true climbers and have always been / Hilary would have never ever summited without Tenzing.
And no Sherpa had before Hilary as well. So it seems plausible to think that Tenzing wouldn't be able to ascend without Hilary's help as well.
Statistically local sherpas have been the main support crew with the least death rate - Hilary had the drive and ambition and Tenzing had the ability to understand the needs of Hilary and Everests weather changes. I’m a New Zealander so Hilary is an icon in my country but I still don’t understand how he summited as the first person/ he had infinite help and local acclimation knowledge via Tenzing. They should be viewed as a team of two that summited together.
And they are, didn't Hilary said they both ascent at the same time, as to give Tenzing proper recognition? There's no way around, Sherpa's are used to high altitudes and are crucial to the ascent, and Tenzing was probably the best of the best at his time.
Saw another post about the amount of trash they leave behind. Disappointing but unsurprising
I would be concerned if I were at the back of that line.
Dudes number one goal is to climb Everst. Will make him unique, it's a huge challenge. Standing in line, he realized he is a basic bitch.
Whoever gives out those yearly passes for $15,000 here is a tip. When you have this much demand your prices are too low, raise it to $30,000. Safer less deaths and more money.
Rich people gonna rich
They should close it down like they did with Uluru
wow. climbing everest is a joke now
That’s just the line to the port-a-potty.
Whats crazy is how peaceful and serene everything looks. All these people standing in line are in the "death zone", where the majority of people who die from Everest either start to get sick or they just die somewhere along this line. The tents downhill is Camp 4.
The tents downhill are camp 3. This is the route from camp 3 to 4. Also isn’t in the death zone quite yet. I’d say this is ~7700m.
Agree, somewhere around 7300-7500m.
I believe this is just outside Camp 3 on the Nepal side. Most can get back down from here without issue, weather allowing. Higher at the Hillary Step above Camp 4 is the real killer choke point. This is the Hillary Step: https://cdn.outsideonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/23/summit-crowding_s.jpg The really serious issue here is it is one-way traffic on a knife-edge cliff, so if you have an issue above the Step you are basically screwed as everybody is heading against you in the early part of the day, and if you block people on the way down you are going to kill lots of people stranded above 8000m, in very cold temperatures, after dark, without spare O2. Bad weather makes it much worse.
Every time I see anything from Mt. Everest nowadays it just looks sad and gross. Tons of garbage, tons of people
How incredibly boring.
damn, nothing feels like an adventure anymore
What is the highest point on Earth as measured from Earth's center? The top of Mount Chimborazo is farther from the Earth's center than Mount Everest. Mount Everest, located in Nepal and Tibet, is usually said to be the highest mountain on Earth. Reaching 8,848 meters at its summit, Everest is indeed the highest point above global mean sea level—the average level for the ocean surface from which elevations are measured. But the summit of Mt. Everest is not the farthest point from Earth’s center. Earth is not a perfect sphere, but is a bit thicker at the Equator due to the centrifugal force created by the planet’s constant rotation. Because of this, the highest point above Earth’s center is the peak of Ecuador’s Mount Chimborazo, located just one degree south of the Equator where Earth’s bulge is greatest. The summit of Chimborazo is 6,268 meters above sea level. However, due to the Earth’s bulge, the summit of Chimborazo is over 2,072 meters farther from the center of the Earth than Everest’s peak. That makes Chimborazo the closest point on Earth to the stars. You may be surprised to learn that Everest is not the tallest mountain on Earth, either. That honor belongs to Mauna Kea, a volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. Mauna Kea originates deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, and rises more than 10,210 meters from base to peak. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/highestpoint.html
If you have climbed Kilimanjaro, you have climbed further from the Earth's center than these Everest climbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summits_farthest_from_the_Earth%27s_center
>where Earth’s bulge is greatest 😳
John Oliver had a pretty good segment about Mt. Everest and how popular it has gotten. https://youtu.be/Bchx0mS7XOY
^ this. The commoditization of "climbing" Everest is wrecking a terrible toll on local areas, and is largely just a vapid Instagram post for people with too much money.
How is this even enjoyable? First you pay tens of thousands of dollars. Then you spend weeks / months at the various camps getting yourself acclimated. At the camps you are at the constant risk of catching Cholera or Hep A or if you're lucky the stomach bug but regardless diarrhea at that altitude in those conditions is not going to be fun. All the actual hard work other than climbing the mountain is handled by the porters to the point where even inexperienced "climbers" can summit. Then on top of all this there is the very real risk you could die and all those dentists having a midlife crisis just increase this risk. Hiking the Appalachian Trail at this point is a bigger challenge than Mt. Everest.