Thread: I'm dying to climb Mt Everest

Originally Posted by David48atTD

... and it's damm expensive to try for that selfie on the mountain top.
Apart from the chance of dying, the permit to climb normally cost $US11,000

That must be just one permit...I believe it costs over $100,000...

Read a couple of books on the subject, always held a slight lure and fascination for me.



Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.

In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day, eight people were dead. Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape. As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.



Released to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the first ever ascent of Mount Everest and updated with a new introduction from Bear Grylls.
On the 29th May 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made history as they took their first triumphant steps on the top of the world.
On 16 May 1998, Bear Grylls followed those same footsteps, achieving a childhood dream and entering the Guinness Book of Records, as the youngest Briton, at 23, to summit Mount Everest.
Taken from his bestselling autobiography, Mud, Sweat and Tears, Climbing Everest tells the gripping story of Bear’s gruelling expedition, one which tested him to his very limits and nearly cost him his life.

The movie is not a bad watch either, once you've read the books.



Everest is a 2015 British-American biographical adventure film directed and co-produced by Baltasar Kormákur, co-produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Nicky Kentish Barnes, Tyler Thompson and Brian Oliver and written by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy, adapted from Beck Weathers' memoir Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest (2000). It stars an ensemble cast of Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Michael Kelly, Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley, Emily Watson, and Jake Gyllenhaal. It is based on the real events of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, and focuses on the survival attempts of two expedition groups, one led by Rob Hall (Clarke) and the other by Scott Fischer (Gyllenhaal).

The film opened the 72nd Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 2015, and was released theatrically on 18 September 2015.[3] It was first released in IMAX 3D on 11 September 2015, in the UK and in IMAX 3D, RealD 3D, and 2D internationally, and exclusively in IMAX 3D, 18 September 2015 as a limited release in the United States and Canada, and along 36 other countries. It began a wide release in the United States on 25 September 2015. The film was a commercial blockbuster, grossing $203 million worldwide over a $55 million budget and received positive reviews from critics.

Would love to climb it, but in reality will have to settle for climbing the three peaks..

The Three Peaks Challenge involves climbing the three highest peaks in England, Wales and Scotland, often within 24 hours.


The three mountains are:
Snowdon, in Wales (1085m)
Scafell Pike, in England (978m)
Ben Nevis, in Scotland (1345m)

I've got some great pics, will have to compile a thread on it.

Once you get above the treeline, you only see bare rock and some scrubby vegetation anyway. And it's ccccold, and it takes a fair while to adjust to the altitude- you feel like shit, basically. I've been to Potosi in the high Andes (supposedly the highest town in the world)- that's enough for me. Reckon I'd prefer to perish in the arms of some luscious lubra in Bora Bora.

7,500 summits since the '50s. 282 deaths in all that time, half of them Sherpas who probably jumped off cliffs to escape the Lonely Planet twats who kept badgering them for an "authentic" experience. More people have probably been killed swallowing bicycles. Is it a slow news day?

Swallowing a bicycle might make a good vid...Outside Lolita's, maybe?...

“There were many, many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act—a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air

“The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

Basically one needs to be fuked in the head to risk life and limb climbing Everest.

It's not like they are impressing any coon, it's been done so many times now it's like who gives a fook.

D

I went through a fairly heavy stage of wanting to climb Everest.

Even went through (what I thought) was some kind of training by tackling Mt. Katahdin (East coast, USA), Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier. Hardly monsters in any mountaineer's book.

A friend and I also climbed a large number of peaks in S. Korea with rocks stuffed down our back packs. I took on a handful of them barefoot.

Then,.....I read 'Into Thin Air.'

And the fantasy came to an end.

As a boy reading High Adventure about the first ones, Edmund Hillary (NZ) and his helper Sherpa Tensing in 1953.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Hillary

At some point the summit of Everest will have to be declared as a mass grave site off limits to the general public.

I disagree, let all the world's retards have a cracking at climbing Everest.

The great thing is that they do not stink up there when they die.

Silly coonts one and all.

Not a hero amoungst the lot of them, simply silly fuckers with to much money to blow.

In May 1998, Francys and Sergei Arsentiev arrived at base camp, Mount Everest. On May 17, they ascended from Advance Base Camp to the North Col, and the following day they reached 7700m (25,262 ft) as 21 other climbers reached the summit of Everest from the North. On May 19, they climbed to 8200 meters (Camp 6). Sergei reported by radio that they were in good shape and were going to start their summit attempt on May 20 at 1:00am. On May 20, after spending the night at Camp 6, they started their summit attempt but turned around at the First Step when their headlamps failed. On May 21, they again stayed at Camp 6, after ascending only 50–100 meters before turning around. After these two aborted attempts on the summit, they began their final ascent on May 22. Due to the absence of oxygen supplementation at such high altitude, the two moved slowly and summitted dangerously late in the day. As a result, they were forced to spend yet another night above 8000 meters. During the course of the evening, the two became separated. Sergei made his way down to camp the following morning, only to find that his wife had not yet arrived. Realizing she had to be somewhere dangerously high upon the mountain, he set off to find her, carrying oxygen and medicine.

Details of what happened next are sketchy, but the most plausible accounts suggest that on the morning of the May 23, Francys Arsentiev was encountered by an Uzbek team who were climbing the final few hundred meters to the summit. She appeared to be half-conscious, affected by oxygen deprivation and frostbite. As she was unable to move on her own, they attended to her with oxygen and carried her down as far as they could, until, depleted of their own oxygen, they became too fatigued to continue the effort. As the Uzbek climbers made their way down to camp that evening, they encountered Sergei Arsentiev on his way back up to her. This is the last time he was seen alive. On the morning of May 24, Ian Woodall (UK), Cathy O'Dowd (South Africa), and several more Uzbeks encountered Francys Arsentiev while on their way to the summit. She was found where she had been left the evening before. Sergei Arsentiev's ice axe and rope were identified nearby, but he was nowhere to be found. Both Woodall and O'Dowd called off their own summit attempts and tried to help Francys for more than an hour, but because of her poor condition, the perilous location, and freezing weather, they were forced to abandon her and descend to camp. She died as they found her, lying on her side, still clipped onto the guide rope. She was aged 40, with one son. Her corpse had the nickname "Sleeping Beauty".

The mysterious disappearance of her husband was solved the following year when Jake Norton, a member of the 1999 "Mallory and Irvine" expedition, discovered Sergei's body lower on the mountain face, apparently dead from a fatal fall while attempting to rescue his wife.[4]

"The Tao of Everest"[edit]
Woodall initiated and led an expedition in 2007, "The Tao of Everest", with the purpose of returning to the mountain to bury the bodies of Francys Arsentiev and an unidentified climber ("Green Boots"), both of whom were plainly visible from the nearby climbing route. Francys Arsentiev's body was visible to climbers for nine years, from her death, May 24, 1998 to May 23, 2007. On May 23, 2007, Woodall was able to locate, and after a brief ritual, drop Arsentiev's body to a lower location on the face, removing the body from view.[3][5]

Since 2014, "Green Boots" has been missing, presumably removed or buried.

What happens in the "Death zone" stays in the death zone.

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Just how deadly is Everest?




From the BBC

They lie frozen in time, thousands of metres above sea level. The grim death toll on Everest is becoming impossible to ignore.

No one knows exactly how many bodies remain on Mount Everest today, but there are certainly more than 200.
Climbers and Sherpas lie tucked into crevasses, buried under avalanche snow and exposed on catchment basin slopes – their limbs
sun-bleached and distorted.
Most are concealed from view, but some are familiar fixtures on the route to Everest’s summit.

Perhaps most well-known of all are the remains of Tsewang Paljor, a young Indian climber who lost his life in the infamous 1996 blizzard.
For nearly 20 years, Paljor’s body – popularly known as Green Boots, for the neon footwear he was wearing when he died – has rested
near the summit of Everest’s north side.
When snow cover is light, climbers have had to step over Paljor’s extended legs on their way to and from the peak.




Returning a body to a family costs thousands of dollars, however, and requires the efforts of six to eight Sherpas – potentially putting
those men’s lives in danger. “Even picking up a candy wrapper high up on the mountain is a lot of effort, because it’s totally frozen
and you have to dig around it,” says Ang Tshering Sherpa, chairman and founder of Asian Trekking, a company based in Kathmandu,
and president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

“A dead body that normally weighs 80kg might weigh 150kg when frozen and dug out with the surrounding ice attached.”

Typically, though, mountaineers who die on a mountain wish to remain there, a tradition co-opted from seafarers more than a century ago.
“But when we have 500 people stepping over a body ever year, that’s no longer acceptable,” says Jenkins, who had to navigate four bodies
when he was last on Everest. “That’s disgraceful.”


It's a really good BBC Article and recommend that you read it if you have an interest in the subject.

Link is at top of page.
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A macabre setting, indeed...The dead are stark reminders that there is no room for error in the zone where the living are not meant to be...

The woman and her husband who were "separated" on their attempt (see Wilsonandson post #13) must have had mad hopeless thoughts before they succumbed to the mighty mountain...

Originally Posted by David48atTD

I'm dying to climb Mt Everest

Really? From what I've heard, Mount Everest will definitely accommodate you, in that regard.

Originally Posted by TuskegeeBen

Originally Posted by David48atTD

I'm dying to climb Mt Everest

Really? From what I've heard, Mount Everest will definitely accommodate you, in that regard.

Actually ...

The title of the OP didn't come from me.
I presume either one of the Mods/Admin changed it ... no problem.


MissKit has written the next chapter in this story here ... https://teakdoor.com/thailand-and-asi...rs-found.html\ (Mount Everest: Bodies of four climbers found in tent)
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^ Page not found?...

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

^ Page not found?...

Sorry, my bad ... https://teakdoor.com/thailand-and-asi...ers-found.html (Mount Everest: Bodies of four climbers found in tent)

Seems like that could have just been posted here.

Some posters criticize those climbers with families for risking their lives on Everest, blaming it on the climber's ego or self-centred needs.
Should men and women who have experienced the highs and lows of mountain climbing literally, have to give up that heightened sense of living which us mortals who have never climbed more than a few stairs, have never felt?
The views, the challenges, the comradeship- the intensity of a life beyond my ground level existence. I can't blame them for feeling they are only really alive when they're on the mountain.

Well, not all are alive...

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One dead in Nepal small plane crash at 'world's most dangerous airport' near Mount Everest



A small plane carrying only crew members and cargo has crashed near Mount Everest, killing one of the pilots, Nepalese officials say.

Two other crew members were injured.
The plane hit a mountain about 20 metres below the runway of Tenzing Hillary Airport at Lukla, the gateway to Mount Everest,
government administrator Umesh Pandey said.

A 2010 History Channel documentary rated Tenzing Hillary Airport as the world's most dangerous.

The plane was carrying two pilots and an air hostess. They were all Nepali nationals.
Mr Pandey said all three on board were taken to a local hospital.
One pilot died at the hospital while the other was in critical condition.

Poor weather conditions were preventing a helicopter from flying out of Lukla to bring them to Nepal's capital, Kathmandu.
Kathmandu Airport spokesman Prem Nath Thakur said the accident would be investigated.
An initial report said it was windy when the plane was about to touch down.

The Czech-manufactured LET-410 plane belonged to the domestic airline Goma Air.
Here
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^ I flew into Lukla once. Nearly made me sick just to see how close to the mountain the pilot got to turn back to the landing strip.