High-altitude OT: Crowded climbing conditions on Everest are lunacy
I was incredibly fortunate to have grown up in a family that spent every summer of my childhood in Colorado, and I was hiking with my dad from the time I was a little kid. I did my first 14er at 7 or 8, and got to the summit of Mt. Elbert (second highest in the lower 48 after Whitney) at 9. Since then I've gotten to the top of 15 of the 14ers in CO, almost all of them pretty easy walkups, the only exception being Longs Peak. I'm a hiker, not a real climber—there a good number of CO 14ers I'll never attempt even if I had the opportunity because of the technical aspects of getting up to those summits.
Even though he was just a hiker himself, my dad was a huge fan of advanced mountaineering and we all avidly followed the exploits of those few hardy souls who summited Everest back in the '50s and early '60s. I've never had any real desire to spend any time up in the Death Zone myself—I like to get up to altitude and feel the sun and wind on my face and enjoy the alpine environment without a thousand layers of gear and oxygen tanks, or the constant real danger of dying there.
But even if I was in physical shape and had the $$ to undertake the trip, I would never consider putting myself in these insane climbing conditions.
I'm curious if anybody in the MGoBlogosphere has already attempted Everest or has plans to do so.
No thanks.
This reminds me of those pictures of people lined up in front of Best Buy on Thanksgiving morning. Whatever meaning summitting Everest had, it's soul is dead.
Personally, i'm a huge fan of living. The slightest error in judgement or if a bad storm comes through you are done.
Spoiled rich boys want to spend $$$ to let you know how driven and exceptional they are because a sherpa schlepped their ass to the summit.
Yup. Pretty much.
I get that it does help the local economies there, but this is just absurd.
Complaining about spoiled rich kids on a Michigan blog...
Hey, we're all rich, we're just not spoiled!
Speak for yourself. I'm very spoiled.
Oh man, did they let one of you Poors in? I'll definitely have to talk to the manager of this establishment.
I attended a wilderness medicine course at there was a fair amount on climbing injuries and altitude problems. Almost every real example of trauma was some indigenous sherpa or porter. No mention of the exploitative aspect of it.
Yes, it supports economies, but experimenting on prisoners advances science.
That picture is legit real? Crazy.
reading 'into thin air', it seems there is a lot of wealthy and ill prepared climbers who basically have sherpas do all the work like that one simpsons episode.
Krakauer is one of the best writers living right now. I just finished Where Men Win Glory, the Pat Tillman story. Into Thin Air was a masterpiece as well, and how fateful was it that he ended up on that expedition and lived to tell about it?
Bonus: one of the guys in that book is a Michigan grad and donated climbing picks to the 1997 national championship team
The part in bold really gets me:
"The 55-year-old American died of altitude sickness as he had lost energy spending hours on the ridges of Everest, waiting to reach the top, said Pasang Tenje Sherpa, chairman of Pioneer Adventure, Cash’s expedition agency.
“He collapsed as soon as he reached the summit,” Pasang told the Post.
The American had hired two specialised guides due to his body weight, but ultimately, they were unable to help him descend safely."
Apparently this guy was called "Badass Grandpa" by friends and co-workers. He doesn't look fat, so I don't know why he needed specialized guides due to his weight.
Ironic he's making that ridiculous Superman (correction: Icarus) pose on a climb he needed people to schlep his gear for him.
I went to high school with Don. He was badass and very fit. He apparently had Icarus syndrome, as well. RIP Don.
He made a choice to risk his life for his ego. Bummer for his family.
Okay, that looks insane and at first I thought it was fake. Seems like there is almost no where to go to peacefully enjoy nature or a romantic expedition anymore. Every freaking place is overrun with hundreds or thousands of MoFos.
Oh, there are plenty of places to get away from it all. They just don't have the prestige and bragging rights of Everest. People don't climb Everest to peacefully enjoy nature or to have a romantic expedition; they climb it so that they can brag to other douchebags about spending $100K on a supposed feat.
It’s easy.
1) go to any state or national park/forest
2) put on some good shoes, socks, and long pants
3) stop at any trailhead that suits your fancy, and
4) walk one mile.
97% of the time you’ll be surrounded by nature and nothing else.
Agree, I was just at Cahokia Mounds State Park right outside of St. Louis at 5:00 pm on a weekday and once you get away from Monks Mound you have the place to yourself(I will admit it's not in exactly the greatest neighborhood, but I was shocked at how quickly I was by myself in a rather pretty spot.)
The irony there is that Cahokia was a bustling metropolis back in the day...or at least the largest pre-Colombian civilization in North America.
Very true.
I lived in Aspen, CO for a couple of years after finishing school and have gone to Aspen almost every summer since. It takes very little effort to find a place to hike where you will run across very few hikers. Walking through a field of of wild flowers on a nice July day, next to a stream and surrounded by snow covered peaks is profound in ways, that unless one has been there, it is hard to imagine how overwhelmingly beautiful nature can be.
To the OP, to be sure, hiking Colorado is not anything close to hiking Everest, but if you are not careful, particularly as you get into higher altitudes, even on warm summer days, you always have to respect the mountains. Monsoonal moisture and the thunderstorms that go with it can be very dangerous, as can falling rocks, animals and a host of other items that can ruin your day or worse. Fourteeners are still very high altitude and I've seen more than a few people, in otherwise good shape, suffer from altitude sickness at 8,000 feet, Aspen's base altitude, give or take a few feet.
"you always have to respect the mountains."
That's why I've always gotten on the trails early so I can summit before the bad shit blows in. Weather up in those altitudes is notoriously fickle; you can see nothing but blue skies for miles around at 11am, and yet by 12:15 ominous looking shit can be rolling in.
I'm always astounded by people I encounter at 1:30 pm while I'm on the way down who are going up wearing shorts, t-shirts and carrying a smallish water bottle but no packs or weather gear.
Don, you are 200% correct. The mornings are generally fine, but come noon, there are no guarantees, Mountain weather can change suddenly and violently. I once did the mid-afternoon thing and was caught in a rock field with nowhere to hide when a nasty thunderstorm blew in and lots of lightning strikes took place very near me. Never again.
As for the pack, another thumbs up. I always carry a sweatshirt/sweater, a poncho or waterproof shell and lots of water for casual day hiking. It is very easy to get dehydrated at higher altitudes. We do mandatory water breaks just to ensure we stay hydrated whether we feel thirsty or not.
Serious mountaineering is another thing altogether. And then there's the case of Aron Ralston, an Aspenite hiking in Utah who cut off his arm when a rock moved and pinned him against a canyon wall. http://www.traditionalmountaineering.org/News_Lost_Solo.htm
100% I was recently in Utah visiting Zion National Park. I was in awe at every turn. The real beauty of the United States lives in its National Parks not in the LA and NYC "glam"
I'll bet the second tallest mountain in the world has about 1/100 that many people waiting in line at the summit.
But if you're in the USA looking for real desolation, go anywhere within 200 miles of Four Corners and drive a back road off of a back road. You will find no people and often an amazing sight at the end.
The second tallest mountain is K2, and from what I understand it is an extremely technical and difficult feat to climb it; a larger percentage of climbers attempting to summit died in the attempt. I remember reading in “Into Thin Air” that they consider the South Col route up Everest the “Yak Route. “
It would be more appropriate if they called it the Yak Line.
Sure that's not the line for The Raptor at Cedar Point on opening weekend?
Chik-fil-A at Somerset Mall in Troy
A friend of mine (through my best friend) attempted to climb to raise $ for Huntington's disease as IIRC his mom and sister had the genetic disorder. On the way up - not sure at what point - he had taken off his crampons because at lower altitude it was warmer and slushy. He fell into a crevasse and didn't make it. Mike O'Brien from Chicago. Guy was a class act and one of the funniest people I've ever known. I took over his fantasy football team and in the unlikely event that I win $ I donate to Huntington's in his name.
I crossed a 250 foot crevasse twice over a horizontal ladder. It did not faze me at the time, but it should have. The follies of youth.
someone should do the smart thing and open up an oxygen bar at the summit so those waiting in line don’t die
Is there wifi up there?
No, fuck it, I'm not going.
Not so fast my friend:
"To the great relief of the Everest community... those days are over, and reliable(ish) wi-fi has arrived at base camp, and dozens of expeditions now sport their own exclusive signal, courtesy of the most extreme telecommunications provider on the planet.
It's all the brainchild of Tsering Gyaltsen Sherpa, a super-charged Nepali entrepreneur who, while leading his native Khumbu Valley into the 21st century, just happened to become the most powerful person in base camp, even if he's practically never there."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/2019/05/mount-everest-link-internet-wifi/
WTF.
I found out this morning one of my high school classmates died on Everest this week, and then this post shows up in my feeds ninety minutes later.
I had been experiencing a number of synchronicities recently, all light and breezy. I prefer they stay that way.
Carry on.
Everything's connected. Just finished watching season 1 of Dark on Netflix and I'm convinced!
Such a good show. Season 2 comes out next month.
Started watching it dubbed. Oh boy huge mistake. Show was ruined. I should try again with subtitles.
Having read the article, I find it relates the demise of my classmate Don Cash. What a waste! It is no longer about summiting Everest; it is now waiting around until you asphyxiate. Shut it down.
When you mentioned a classmate died this week, I immediately thought of Cash—sorry to hear it was.
Apparently he was driven by the personal goal of summiting the highest peak on every continent, and had lost parts of fingers to frostbite on a previous climb. He also requested that if he died on a mountain that his body be left there. He left behind a wife and four kids. 55 is wayyy too young to die.
The family thinks he probably had a heart attack, but they'll probably never know for sure.
Amen.
There are dead bodies on Mount Everest that serve as directional and path markers.
Yeah, from OP's article as well, this is stark. There's a "clean up the dead bodies" campaign.
For years, dead bodies have been left on Everest. On Thursday, some of the corpses were brought down from the mountain as a part of a cleanup campaign.
http://bit.ly/2HK857W
I've heard about this a few times recently and saw an article today too. Seems like Nepal loves that tourism money and doesn't really want to consider reducing the amount of people going up. Seems like a relatively simple solution is to jack the price of admission up big time and limit the number of people you allow to go up per year
Yeah - it's fairly big $$$ for Nepal.
As I understand, there's only a 4-6 week window (generally May) where reaching the Summit of Everest is realistic.
And then within THAT window: the variability of the daily weather means reaching the summit is only realistic about 25% of the time.
Those are the structural realities. Without limits, traffic jams are inevitable.
(within the storm-chasing community, these same things are being talked about --- any spring days where tornadoes are likely in Texas, Oklahoma or Kansas have become interminable traffic jams. This past Monday was particularly bad).
The article suggests it's closer to two weeks, and the day in question apparently presented some of the best conditions ever, resulting in 250 attempting to summit.
I can barely climb up a flight of stairs.
I did Wheeler (13K) here in NM and that just about kicked my a$$. At one point I had to stop every four steps to catch my breath (was raised at or below sea level) as I was new to high altitude living. Plus it was knee deep snow. I'm glad I did it, but I prefer a more relaxing hike.