Mount Everest 2024

Yes! After Christmas, I look forward to Everest time. I've been watching lots of old videos of all the deaths. I can't wait to see the teams this year.

Yes, we discussed the new chipping guidelines when they were announced. DL is always on top of everything Mount Everest, it is one of the more peculiar things about this place.

[quote]climbers would be required to haul their feces off of the peak and down to Base Camp via plastic WAG bags.

Yeah, it's about time they started protecting the environment from a bunch of nasty Westerners on holiday. I don't see a problem.

And Free Tibet.

We had a bumper crop of deaths in 2023. 17!

Do people die every year?

Take them all, Chomolungma.

Awwwww yeah, let’s get this party started!

I thought I’d missed it.

“ Everest permits are down 34%. The trend in recent years is for teams to arrive much later than, let’s say, a decade ago, so we’ll see.” From the Alan Arnette blog linked below.

Idiots. There's plenty of nature to enjoy without having to worry about it trying to kill you.

Everest is fascinating because every year there is an increasing amount of people with more money than sense who seem to think Everest is some sort of theme park (especially after seeing pictures of the lines) and they think it makes them heroes or something when all it makes them look like is entitled morons. There is nothing heroic anymore. There are ladders and tour guides and warming tents. Hell, you can get married up there now. And after each tragic event we can tsk tsk and say "Death by Misadventure". Not to mention it reminds us to admire George Mallory's absolutely magnificent nude photos taken by Virginia Woolf's sister.

I propose a meeting for the Supreme Court Justices there --------------- let;s see who are the REAL men and women?????

R11 is more damaged than anything Mt Everest could do to anyone.

I need a break and some oxygen climbing a set of stairs.

For R7:

R5 Not every year, but we always hope.

I can't believe we've never discussed this chick.

We did discuss her here. The Arnette blog has brief bios of many of the (non-professional) climbers (less so in recent years) who then had blogs of their own covering their Everest journey. I used to read up on a few of them and then see how far they got. Hers was a combination of misplaced determination, over confidence, under preparedness, and a cut rate expedition company. Wow, that was back in 2012.

R15, thank you for the video link about her story. The woman narrating looks like SNL's Debbie Downer.

R16 Yes, the Arnette blog! That's where we can find who we want to follow this year.

There's an episode of The Fifth Estate about her.

She was interesting for the simple fact that she had no experience at all, couldn't even put on crampons, and for some reason, she and her husband were thinking she could really do this. I guess she did though, right? It's the descent that got her.

Shah trained for the climb using a Stairmaster in her gym

How did she manage to get as far as she did without much training? I remember that part about the stairmaster, r21.

I can't answer this question and I don't know why Shah wasn't pursued to pursue another personal challenge

I guess it's not a hard climb, technically. It's not like Anapurna or K2. You can get up with sheer determination and a sherpa. Paraplegics can do it with help.

55K for a permit? See you in Aruba toots.

"Whatever ever she'd do she'd do it with passion." Bitches like that deserve to die.

Persuaded to pursue

[QUOTE] How did she manage to get as far as she did without much training?

She was born in Nepal so had high altitude tolerance in her DNA.

I read somewhere that as challenging as the climb up is the real danger is the climb down. I think it has to do with oxygen levels. I’m sure this has been discussed at length on the annual DL Everest threads, but maybe someone can provide some detail for this thread.

R29 - exhaustion plays a huge part. Adrenaline will get you up but it won't get you down. The push from Camp 4 to the summit is one of the most physically and technically demanding sections of climbing Mount Everest and typically takes anywhere from 10 to 20 hours — some of this will depend on the queue at the summit.

Many climbers don't leave themselves enough oxygen to get back down and others forget that it's much easier to slip and fall when climbing down as it is when climbing up. They feel like they've done the hard part and become less vigilant.

Also, the longer a climber remains in the Dead Zone (above 8000 metres) the more chance there is of HAPE or HACE setting in. Often this hits on the down climb or at Camp 4.

Yes R29. It's the descent that kills you. You're pretty wiped out at that point and you've been in the death zone for a long time and your body is dying the whole time you're up there. You don't really want to dick aroundd, you want to get back down asap. Yes, what R30 said.

They should install a funicular.

She had been awake for 26 hours when she became unresponsive on the descent. Staying at the top for 4 hours was also unwise.

Just seeing the very long queue waiting to ascend, it’s not a unique challenge. Anyone can see that now. But it’s a huge source of income for a poor country.

Four hours at the top? Insanity. 30 minutes max is what is recommended.

Article reviewing new book about Everest.

I know I'm going to hell but the way the sherpa's just casually said...we tied her body to the ice and left her. LOL she's as bad as the one having a sherpa carry a coffee maker and then fucking on the mountain.

I wonder if any of the Sherpas are rough trade?

I’m guessing climbers will make their Sherpa carry their poo, like I do when I walk my dog.

It's not just poo. They're wiping their arses too and leaving toilet paper allover the place. Well at least I hope they wipe their arse.

They have been leaving their shit up there for years so now they have to bring it back down to feed the yaks

I've said this on other Everest threads, but in many articles about Everest, they'll be spotlighting a climbing expedition and the various group members, and inevitably there's someone who just flat out bails - at base camp, at camp 2 or 3. It always makes me laugh. Like they wake up one morning and say, "yeah, this isn't gonna happen; I'm gonna chill. Maybe I'll learn Spanish when I get home - that seems like a doable challenge."

For some people just getting to base camp is the whole challenge R40. I would probably bail too, as soon as I saw the Icefalls and those shitty ladders that go over them. I appreciate them leaving though, man has to know his limitations.

Totally, agree R41. If they're doubting it in any sense, to any degree, it's smart and responsible bail.

Reading more of the AA blog, the “mandatory GPS tag” is no such thing. He thinks it’s a small tag that needs a hand held receiver to scan for it. Which means you have to have those scanners at hand and a pretty good idea where someone got lost.

But here’s the absolute easiest thing to cut down on Everest deaths/overcrowding/trash:

“Require all climbers to have summited 7000 meters or higher before issuing them Everest permits.”

(^ and those are mainly in the Himalayas or that part of the world)

Preach R43! I'll go one better, no supplemental oxygen allowed. That will clean up the mountain too.

"Require all climbers to have summited 7000 meters or higher before issuing them Everest permits.”

Alk 7k expeditions cost at least another $30k so they won't specify that because it means only millionaires can afford to summit Everest. Jon Krakauer himself did well and had never submitted a 7k.

Serious climbers have sponsors.

Also:

David Breashears died March 14 at the age of 68 of natural causes. He was found unresponsive at his home in Marblehead, Massachusetts. David is the filmmaker who co-directed and co-produced the 1998 IMAX documentary “Everest.” He was making the film in 1996 and stopped when disaster hit, taking eight lives, including Adventure Consultants’s co-founder, Rob Hall. Breashears stopped his film project and provided spare oxygen tanks, batteries, and food to searchers.

David Breashears is a great loss to mountaineering. One of the few of his generation who didn't die in the mountains. Really enjoyed his book on Everest.

When someone dies or there's a high death rate during one season all these narcissists want to blame someone else.

I'd root for avalanches if they could distinguish between Sherpas and trust fund thrillseekers.

As of April 15, 20% fewer permits issued.

The sherpas setting up the path through the Khumbu Icefall can only advance 3 ft per day according to Alan Arnette.

Summit period is mid to late May.

Three feet only? Did you mean 30?

It said 3 ft. I guess it was much more difficult than usual.

“ Moving three feet a day, the Doctors noted five potential areas where climbers could be in danger as the glacier moves and teetering ice towers wobble. Everyone will need to be focused and get through those areas quickly.”

(Hit post too soon.)

Thank you r52/53.

Most normals like us would be freaking out to cancel the season in such conditions. Right?

If I could have one wish, I’d wish that K2 was the highest mountain in the world.

Or Annapurna, R55.

3 feet a day is absurdly slow progress. The Icefall must be a nightmare. They have ten days to get it sorted before the season starts and that won't happen. Maybe the mountain will be closed this year.

The icefall is 1.62 miles long, roughly 2,000ft of climbing and usually takes between 3-6 hours for climbers to navigate.

Impossible to get it ready in time.

The icefall is the fucking craziest part! That would be the summit for me, and they do it multiple times...insane.

Did they really mean 3 feet or 30. Someone had suggested upthread that it was a typo?

R48 There were many accommodations made in 1996 to accommodate the Imax crew, I think they cannot be seen as blameless.

Well, looks like business is picking up. Nepal processed 203 permits last week so the total so far exceeds this time last year by 33.

The last report I read said permit applications (or maybe granted) were down by 20%. Guess an impoverished country needs more stupids to keep up the GDP, or something.

Base camp would be my goal, too. Plenty close enough to see the scary shit, not be able to breathe very well, be cold AF constantly and get to commune with Chomolungma.

Do we have any favorite expeditions this year? Any good teams? I need to look at Arnette's blog. I have to find someone to root for.

Poop Corpse Mountain

Arnette hasn’t highlighted any climbers (yet), just the companies who’ve applied for permits.

Here's a few no oxygens at least.

"These no Os attempts are always fascinating to watch and often with tragic results, as we saw last year with Hungarian Szilard Suhajda, who was climbing Everest alone with no Sherpa support and without supplemental oxygen when he went missing. A Seven Summits Trek summit team of Sherpas guiding Chinese clients last saw him at the base of the Hillary step. He is presumed dead as he was never seen again last season."

The solo climbers are insane. Even Ueli Steck got into trouble doing that.

What a terrible idea.

Yes R70! This is what I'm looking for, the ones that are so ridiculous and can only be brought up with help from a sherpa. Not everyone gets to summit Everest, and most of them are sighted and can hear, I don't get why these people want to do this. There are other ways to show you're like everyone else, this isn't one of them.

They can just take her to base camp and tell her it's the summit.

Will Bosley the guide dog be going too? I can't wait to see.

The guide dog is named Tenzing.

I was watching American Housewife and there was a cute kid on it, I looked him up and he's famous!

Panorama view.

If Mosedale is at Camp 1 have the Icefall doctors finished?

How long does it take to get the icefall ready?

Pretty soon they'll be hauling cousin Geri up that mountain.

R79 Ha! They definitely could, and should, maybe she'd at least be funny.

The 2024 climbing season on Mount Everest is in full swing this week as some expedition teams are arriving at Base Camp and others have begun acclimatization rotations on the peak.

As Outside recently reported, the official start on the mountain’s Nepali side is delayed this year due to dangerous conditions in the Khumbu Icefall. The circuitous route through the glacier that precedes the easier climbing up to Camp I and Camp II is longer than the one used in previous years, due to an unusually dry winter and a lack of snowfall.

The scheduling delay and new route aren’t the only dynamics impacting expeditions on the world’s highest peak this year. Competition from China has drawn some climbing teams away from the southern Base Camp in Nepal. And new rules and regulations imposed by the Nepali government will shift how some teams handle safety, decorum in Base Camp, and even poop.

More at link.

388 permits granted. That’s 185 more since last week but last year on this date, it was 454.

17 deaths last year despite their claims that Everest is safer than ever. That's more than were killed in the earthquake and in the Ice Fall disaster.

What was the Ice Fall disaster?

R84 In 2014 I guess an avalanche killed a bunch of people in the already precarious icefall.

"What was the Ice Fall disaster?"

Ask Sasha Cohen.

People are acting like the mountain belongs to them. If Nepal wasn’t so dependent on tourism, I wish they could ban tourists from climbing the mountain until they can clean up their mess that they created.

Maybe you could volunteer to check if the climbers are cleaning up their mess at Camp 4, R87? I can see you now, staggering around and trying to screech 'pick up your shit', then getting mown down by an katabatic wind and tossed over the Kangshung Face.

R88 So precise.

[quote]R31 It's the descent that kills you. You're pretty wiped out at that point and you've been in the death zone for a long time and your body is dying the whole time you're up there.

Why don’t they construct a big, twisty plastic slide from the summit to the next camp down? Then people could get there quickly, without accidents.

The slide should be a bright color, so tired hikers can find it.

Actually, you could make it like chutes and ladders, and they have to roll to get to the top.

Big Picture

New Everest permits have slowed and will probably not set a record this spring. Nepal issued 38 new Everest permits this past week, bringing the total on Everest to 390.

Some teams are slowing down their rotation plans, waiting for Camps 2 and 3 to be established. They were delayed when the Icefall Doctors took an extra ten days to establish a route through the Icefall.

My Summit Coach clients tell me it is long, zig-zags a lot and feels dangerous with tall seracs hovering above the route in places. They will need to get through it as quickly as possible, but some reports take ten hours, almost twice as long as some last year.

Sherpas from Seven Summits Treks are steadily fixing the route up the Lhotse Face. IMG reports, “fixing teams reached the Yellow Band today, so they are making good progress on Lhotse Face. Hopefully, they will reach the South Col in the next couple of days.”

Some expect them to reach the summit in mid-May.The weather has been dry and cold thus far, but this is about to change. High winds could hamper some progress on Everest. I suspect the rope fixers will pause around May 1 to let a disturbance calm before reaching the South Col.

- Alan Arnette

[QUOTE] My Summit Coach clients tell me it is long, zig-zags a lot and feels dangerous with tall seracs hovering above the route in places.

Promising, as long as they don't fall on any Sherpas

[QUOTE] . I suspect the rope fixers will pause around May 1 to let a disturbance calm before reaching the South Col.

Basically the weather from hell is coming and everyone will be stuck in their tents for days chomping codeine for their Base Camp headaches.

So the icefall is what's taking so long? FUCK THAT! What's the problem there? Also, don't they have to summit by mid May? I thought the window firmly slams around the 17-20. So if it's taking longer than that, they're screwed. Alright, shit's gonna start getting interesting. And what of our blind and deaf heroine? I hope she's doing well and enjoying the peace of not having to see piles of shit everywhere, and hear base camp transmissions.

There MUST be a virtual Everst program by this point with a VR headset. That would be interesting to get even a little feel of the height and steepness and views.

You’d need something to simulate the lack of oxygen

How about that blackout game on tik tok R97? Play that shit with your vr headset on.

Oh R88, great voice of reason. I hope you and your momma falls off the mountain.

Climbing Everest used to be an even more dangerous pursuit than it is today, requiring huge bravery, endurance and skill. Even then the mountain could kill. A century ago, it claimed the lives of two of Britain’s finest gay climbers, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine.

The world’s highest mountain eventually succumbed to human challenge when, almost three decades later, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay carried the flags of Britain, the UN, and Nepal to its summit on 29 May 1953. Sporadic trips involving handfuls of explorers continued over succeeding years.

But the slopes of Everest have been transformed in recent years. Its peaks and ridges are now regularly flooded with tourists vying to reach its 29,032ft (8,849 metre) summit. In 2023, more than 1,200 people – paying fees of around £40,000 a head – attempted the feat. Of these, more than 600 succeeded. A place once synonymous with remote, unsullied grandeur has become a high-end tourist trap, leaving its once pristine slopes littered with tattered tents, abandoned gear and human waste. Everest tourism may generate hundreds of millions of pounds for Nepal, but this comes at a heavy cost.

They seem to be way behind, they started on the 1st.

" They were delayed when the Icefall Doctors took an extra ten days to establish a route through the Icefall" So they're behind, I think they should be at camp 3 now but they're still at 2.

So roughly half the people who pay the permit fee succeed in summiting. I’d like to see an article on the ones who turn back. Do they try again, do they feel like failures and that they wasted $40,000, or do they not allow themselves to believe that.

I once read a logbook that people wrote in describing their recent experience climbing a nearby mountain (average mountain, not the Himalayas). To do the trek, you had to climb all night, usually in the rain. The path was all mud. The goal was to arrive at the peak at dawn when the clouds parted enough to see the sunrise. Everyone—gung ho backpackers—wrote how terrible the climb was, how difficult it was doing it in the dark with just headlamps, lots of slipping in the mud, the incessant rain turning cold as you climbed higher BUT IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!!1! Except one brave soul wrote, No, it was truly awful and she wished she’d never done it. It wasn’t worth it.

Ha R103, that one woman, that would be me. I wish I'd never done it, but at least I did! It used to be that people would use go fund me to pay for their Everest bullshit so if they didn't summit, no biggie. The icefall part and base camp would be almost worth it, at least you saw it.

[quote]He is presumed dead as he was never seen again last season.

Yeah, I think that's a safe assumption. Everest, the mountain that proves "what goes up must come down" wrong.

I finally came down!

They brought green boots down?

Oh, sorry, I guess they moved him. I thought they brought him all the way down.

In Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauker represents himself as just another hapless client, but he was actually a better technical climber than anyone on the expedition except for Anatoli Boukreev.

No wonder Jon shot up the mountain (second to summit after Anatoli) and then down at lightning speed, despite running out of oxygen between the Hilary Step and the Balcony.

Yes R109. He was a serious contender. On another climb he would have been average but considering all the rookies in that year's expedition, he was really good.

Our blind girl was almost not able to go!

"The Nepal Supreme Court has done good work with respect to climbing, such as in 2016 when they struck down a new rule to ban climbers above 75 years of age, double amputees, and the visually impaired. This ruling appears to have been implemented."

Let the bottleneck begin!

R111 Golly, how utterly silly.

Oh there's a doc about the most insane part of the mountain.

Looks like all the rules/laws that Nepal implements are easily ignored.

Lucy wanted to climb Mount Everest but Gary talked her out of it.

Buck, on the other hand, would never climb Mt Everest.

Viv was all set to be Lucy's Sherpa.

Nepal is a beautiful country. I went in 2015 and had a great time.

I would love to visit, r118.

I was friends with a guy in college whose dad taught at the American university in Kathmandu. He said it was a beautiful place, unlike any other on earth.

R119 I’m inclined to agree with him. I saw so many beautiful sites there and the people were really warm and friendly. The food was delicious too.

I would live to visit Bhutan. The architecture is magical. 🤗

Poor, hot, and dirty never makes for a beautiful destination.

Don’t write off Nepal just because it’s between China and India. It’s a beautiful country,

40-year-old Norwich City FC boss developed HAPE at Base Camp and had to be coptered back to hospital in Kathmandu.

It’s one thing to develop HAPE at Camp 2 but Base Camp? Clearly, his body was having none of it.

Yeah, HAPE at base camp? I mean Base Camp is high for most normal people and you need to acclimate, but people trying to scale Everest, you'd think they would be so acclimated.

Yeah, that's such a waste. I wonder how much he paid and how pissed the people who sponsored him are.

"I was rushed to hospital where, fortunately, I received the treatment I desperately needed.

The doctor told me I was very lucky I got there in time – these words haunt me as I know what I could lose.

I have been told I cannot go back up the mountain because the risk of it happening again so soon is too high."

He literally just walked around base camp.

Base Camp is at 5300m altitude! A lot of us would suffer there. I got mild altitude sickness on the summit of Mount Teide (migraine and lethargy) and that is 3775m.

We have the first Everest summits of the spring 2024 season. Adrian Ballinger of Alpenglow, now in Chengdu on his way to Chinese Base Camp on the Tibet side, tells me the Tibetan rope fixing team summited today, May 7, opening the route to all climbers.

This was expected, given China allowed Chinese climbers to be on Everest weeks ahead of foreigners. Citing national holidays and other delays, foreigners were prohibited from entering Tibet until May 7, but there was speculation that the rope team was working on the route.

On the Nepal side, it’s a mixed bag of activities. Climbers are still on acclimatization rotations, some resting in base camp waiting for the rope and weather window, and some have dropped back to lower villages like Namache or Lukla. A few have taken helicopters back to Kathmandu for a high-end R&R. In any event, look for summits on the Nepal side as early as this upcoming weekend, weather permitting.

For those trying to follow climbers on the Nepal side, note that the Internet is spotty this year, so we have long periods of since. Rest assured, all is well, and assume the best.

On both sides, climbers can expect more difficult climbing this spring due to the warm, dry winter that left the mountain with less than usual snow and more than usual exposed rock, thus rock fall is more likely.

- Alan Arnette

Annette reports the first death on an 8000 metre peak this year - a Sherpa on Makalu.

Damn. hate when Sherpas die.

[quote]R130 Annette reports the first death on an 8000 metre peak this year -

YAY!

[quote]a Sherpa on Makalu.

Oh no : (

Oh no.

I think I would prefer to climbb from the Chinese side, no matter how exposed it is - no Icefall.

Me, too, r131.

Mostly because I know it was some entitled twat that caused it.

The north route is much more technical and the distance between Base Camp and the other camps is a true slog. Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman were caught out there. They thought it was easier than it was and died trying to summit without oxygen.

Now who's going to carry my coffee maker up this hill?

Any word on the blind girl summiting yet?

Really not much news on the Arnette blog. Is there another one to follow?

Ukrainian climber Valentyn Sypavin, 41, became the first foreigner to summit Everest this spring.

As many as fifty people made the summit of Everest on Monday morning, May 13th.

Two Mongolian climbers are missing. Usukhjargal Tsedendamba, 31 and Purevsuren Lkhagvajav, 53, were using base camp-only services from 8K Expeditions and climbing together without supplemental oxygen or Sherpa support. They left for the summit from the South Col at 8:45 a.m. on May 13 and haven’t been heard from since.

Yes, that's why we're here R140! Good for them, not using oxygen, their deaths will be remembered in a more heroic way than pussies who use it.

[QUOTE] Two Mongolian climbers are missing. Usukhjargal Tsedendamba, 31 and Purevsuren Lkhagvajav, 53, were using base camp-only services from 8K Expeditions and climbing together without supplemental oxygen or Sherpa support.

Idiots!

Their bodies have been found. They had been climbing during high winds.

More climbers summited on May 13th and 15th, bringing the total to 97 Everest summits from the Nepal side

most teams are targeting May 19-21

From previous year’s deaths, the Nepal Army, on a cleaning mission, recovered a body on Lhotse and another on Everest. They will be delivered to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital’s forensic lab in Kathmandu. The twelve-member cleaning team aims to retrieve five bodies and ten tons of trash from Everest.

Wow, 19-21 sounds really late. I thought they usually liked to be done by the 13th.

I wonder if any paranormal investigators have studied Everest. A lot of death. Surely it's a hot spot for hauntings.

[QUOTE]The twelve-member cleaning team aims to retrieve five bodies and ten tons of trash from Everest.

This almost sounds like joke. Twelve men for 10 tons of trash?

Conditions are bad and there'sstill a massive push to summit.

[QUOTE]Climbers Michal Ryszard Wensierski of the UK and Purba Sherpa of Makalu Adventure first notified rescuers about the bodies’ location. The Makalu Adventure pair summited on Wednesday despite bad weather and reportedly saw the deceased Mongolians near the South Summit. Today’s rescue patrol located the remains of the first climber then scouted the summit area and peered toward the Tibetan side of the mountain.

[QUOTE]Conditions are presently tough on Everest. Lakpa Sherpa said that the rescuers had to climb in very bad weather. Despite this, many teams gathered in Camp 2 are heading up to higher camps. Sherpa staff need to enlarge and supply Camp 4 at 7,900m in preparation for the massive summit push to begin this weekend. May 19-22 will be very busy days on Everest.

Tenzing, starring Willem Dafoe and Tom Hiddleston, produced by Apple Original Films, according to Variety. Hiddleston will star as Sir Edmund Hillary with Dafoe as expedition leader John Hunt. Casting for Tenzing Norgay to come.

[quote] Yeah, it's about time they started protecting the environment from a bunch of nasty Westerners on holiday.

Westerners? Oh no, dear. Since 1960 loads of Japanese, Chinese, Indians and South Koreans have met their maker on Everest along with Taiwanese, Chilean, Malaysian, Singaporean, Mongolians and Russians (Putin doesn’t consider Russia part of the west).

India, China, South Korea and Japan seem to be particularly interested in Everest and launch as many expeditions as westerners.

Sadly, the most dead nationals on Everest are Nepalese, since they accompany almost every expedition. Before you go blaming westerners for their deaths too, keep in mind it’s Nepal that gets to make rules about who gets to go on Everest’s and when - not westerners.

Nepal is in charge of safety rules on the mountain - not Westerners. Sherpa’s know it’s dangerous but they willingly take it because they get paid well. Many Nepalese have bought homes in the US from mountain climbing money (particularly in PNW) and when an earthquake hit Nepal a few years ago teams of Nepalese nurses from the US - including from Bellevue Hospital - responded.

Take a look at the deaths listed below and how many non-westerners are included. In “Into Thin Air,” the author mentions Asian expeditions on the mountain during their climb. Green Boots, one of the most famous bodies on Everest, was Indian. When the British climber David Sharp died on Everest, a Turkish team tried to help him, as did a Lebanese climber.

Everett is not a westerners playground. It’s a multinational playground with people from every continent making climbing season a mess.

So nothing notable has happened? I have Everest on my Google notifications

One day after summiting Everest for the second time this season, Valentyn Sypavin stood on top of Lhotse with a fellow Ukrainian client. Sypavin intends to summit Everest one more time before the season ends. There is some debate whether a single permit allows more than one summit.

At least four climbers have been rescued from a few meters below the summit of Mount Everest as an ice mound broke off washing them down the route about 90m below onto the northern side of the peak. A chunk of ice mound collapsed near Hillary Step and swept them off towards the northern slope, according to Ngaa Tenji Sherpa, founder of Summit Force. “All of them have been rescued successfully and are now safe,” he told Everest Chronicle.

Today thru the 25th for the big push.

I wonder if there is rivalry for peak space between climbers from the Chinese side and the other side.

Romanian climber found dead in his tent. Was attempting climb without oxygen.

Sorry, forgot the link.

Weird, do people normally just die in their tents? I thought they usually died of exhaustion, basically, on the way down.

So Dyatlov! Hey we should have a Dyatlov thread. I wonder if he poisoned himself with his heater or something. Imagine, summiting with no oxygen and then dying in your tent.

It's been pretty common over the years with high altitude illness, compounded by the fact he was attempting an O2-free climb.

[QUOTE]high altitude cerebral oedema (HACE) and high altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE).

[quote]R154 Weird, do people normally just die in their tents? I thought they usually died of exhaustion, basically, on the way down.

We need Jessica Fletcher!

R155: Dyatlov?? What's that??

I hereby petition to rename this site The Dyatlov Lounge.

HACE and HAPE - The High Altitude Death Twins!!

Another fright-scape

^^^ JFC, I think the lines are shorter at Disneyland.

That just doesn’t look like fun to me.

A number of other dead and missing, though it's confusing due to overlapping reports how many or who when...

IFMGA guide Vinayak Malla summited Everest at 6 am on the morning of May 21, the busiest summit day, with Elite Exped clients. On their way back, they videoed how the snow cornice couldn’t stand the weight of hundreds of climbers and gave in, dragging a number of people into the void.

The video doesn’t show the actual collapse but just its lead-up and aftermath. Still, the footage is mind-blowing for its clarity and for depicting the mad sight of an overcrowded summit ridge. Dozens of climbers inch across a narrow snow arete, which can’t bear the weight and eventually crumbles.

There are 6 confirmed Everest deaths this year, not including any from ^

No, r164 is right, overlapping reports and missing vs dead. A British guy and a Sherpa are missing from that snow collapse.

Those pictures are fucking terrifying, r165

Imagine, the group nearest the camera saw the snow give way and now they have to walk on that section.

I'm assuming that the line situation means you can't chicken out and turn back at some point. What a bunch of brainless egotists.

Bottom of Mariana trench should be the new adventure ego flex. Only so many can go at once. The trench (from it's lowest point) fits the height of Everest PLUS 1.2 miles on top of that.

Thin the herd

I always associate Everest with death because of all the frozen dead bodies they have buried on the way to the top. They pile rocks on top of the frozen corpses and leave hand made markers. It is gruesome and spooky.

[quote]R165 The video doesn’t show the actual collapse but just its lead-up and aftermath.

[italic]GODDAMNIT ! !

[quote]R168 Imagine, the group nearest the camera saw the snow give way and now they have to walk on that section.

Like the glass bridge in ‘Squid Game”

[bold]: o

The British guy's poor deluded wife thinks he can be rescued from just below the summit by helicopter.

Someone posted footage of the huge queue to reach the Summit on Reddit, the Nepalese should be charging a lot more for the privilege

𝐈𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬

TWO missing, presumed dead

And as such, in the death zone, if you're missing, you're dead. People can't afford to stop and help out someone else as they are dying too. The Brit's wife is an idiot, and bringing choppers up there is dangerous. We read this shit every year, and we only read it, we don't live it. How is it that we know better than them the etiquette and the chances of making it? Dummies.

Bringing choppers up there isn’t dangerous, it’s impossible.

It's not impossible, but it's incredibly dangerous and rare. Asshole Beck Weathers was choppered down. That's the kind of shit that can make an avalanche and not something they like to do, but of course Beck's wife insisted.

"Weathers was later helped to walk, on frozen feet, to a lower camp, where he was a subject of one of the highest altitude medical evacuations ever performed by helicopter"

Doesn't waiting until late May make the conditions more amendable to a snow collapse? I always read that the optimal summit window is pretty narrow.

They need a turnstile.

Why don’t they lower pre fab buildings along the upper trail, as emergency stations? They could have solar panel roofs to create warmth etc.

With a nice hot tub

Yes! And a little fern bar for mingling.

Everest REALLY needs a coffee station.

If they put in some bathrooms and recycling bins up there it wouldn’t be wall-to-wall human waste/empty cylinders.

If Everest were in America we’d have DONE this by now.

i know people are kidding about putting up permanent structures like railings, etc.

but if we can put men on the moon, this is also possible.

wise? maybe not.

possible? yes.

I wouldn't put anything past the Nepalese govt at this point. It's nothing more than a cashgrab for them and they need to stop with the fake outrage about the trash because it's a problem of their own making. Typical third world hypocrisy.

End of season approaching, over 500 summits (foreigners and Nepalis)

If there was a Starbucks at the very top, think what you could CHARGE!

I recommend the movie Everest from 2015, it's very good.

If it were anything like my neck of the woods there would be a Dunkin' every 500 feet

What is the best movie or book about the 1996 disaster? I’ve read Into Thin Air, but DLers on some thread shit all over that.

In addition to their shit, new rules require “every climber to carry down at least eight kilograms (17.6 pounds) of garbage”

lol k

[quote] If it were anything like my neck of the woods there would be a Dunkin' every 500 feet

It would attract an even worse clientele then Stahbucks.

Can't they develop garbage drones to go pick up garbage? We can send a rover all the way to Mars, but 29 thousand feet is an issue?

They should do some cash incentive to carry a body back down on your way home. It wouldn’t have to be carried… you could just kick it in front of you.

Or since it’s surely frozen solid, you could even ride it down like a snow board?

You could ride the frozen bodies like a sled.

You people thing climbers made nice big wound solid poop on the mountain that could be scooped like a litter box. Most shit on that mountain was liquid diarrhea from altitude sickness. Krakauer mentions it in Into Thin Air.

I never read the book Into Thin Air, I read the magazine article he wrote for Outside Magazine. I tried to find the article but I couldn’t find it. I think it was locked once he wrote the book. It was a real sensation as a magazine article and then he got a contract to write the book.

> nice big wound solid poop

round solid poop

It's nearly impossible to find any sympathy for these people when they die or get injured. Except for the Sharpies.

Are you talking about Everest climbers or Trump's associates?

Yay, I brought up Trump on an Everest thread!

R198 flying drones are impossible due to altitude, Dora Dumbfuck.

Drones can fly as high as 60,000 feet. Commercial drones are often limited to a maximum height of 400 feet. But that is a regulatory limit - not an actual limit.

That's not true, R205. Dora Dumbfuck.

Top Nepalese mountaineer Nimsdai Purja is raging because another team sabotaged his expedition's climb by cutting the rope below the South Summit.

The Nepalese are far too accommodating with this ignorant fetishism

Weathers was evacuated by helicopter from Camp 2 not Camp 4 or the Summit.

Weathers was later helped to walk, on frozen feet, to a lower camp, where he was a subject of one of the highest altitude medical evacuations ever performed by helicopter.[6] Following his helicopter evacuation from the Western Cwm, his right arm was amputated halfway between the elbow and wrist. All four fingers and his thumb on his left hand were amputated, as well as parts of both feet. His nose was amputated and reconstructed with tissue from his ear and forehead.[7]

- Wikipedia

The Western Cwm is where Camp 2 is located.

To the shit obsessives:

All shit on Everest - liquid or not - freezes solid and become fused with the ground.

Unfortunately, corpses meet the same fate. Moving them requires hours of chipping away to detach them from the rock they've fused to.

Per r208 , ExplorersWeb May 19

Nirmal “Nimsdai” Purja has made headlines again, this time not for a mountaineering achievement but for allegedly breaking the rules on Everest.

Nepal’s Department of Tourism has started a probe after witnesses and officials said his company, Elite Exped, allowed one of its teams with a permit for neighboring Lingtren to climb to Everest’s Camp 3.

According to The Himalayan Times, Purja also used a helicopter to fly from Kathmandu directly to Everest’s Camp 2, a shortcut forbidden on Everest. Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority is currently investigating.

“Most of the climbers from an 11-member team [from a] Lingtren Peak expedition of Elite Exped, run by celebrated climber Nirmal Purja, illegally crossed the Icefall section of Mt. Everest and reached Camp III earlier this week,” o

Elite Exped wrote letters to ExplorersWeb and The Himalayan Times denying The Himalayan Times’ report. “Robert Hutchinson and Kayla Perez [two members of the group] both had valid permits for Everest,” the company told The Himalayan Times. The rest of the people…only trained at base camp for their preparation to climb Lobuche East. They had the correct permits for this. They did not climb Everest with Elite Exped.”

Their letter contained no explanation or clarification about the team supposedly climbing Lingtren.

In a second Himalayan Times article, editor Rajan Pokhrel notes that non-Everest teams are not allowed to train or even stay at Everest Base Camp, as per this year’s mandate issued by the authorities of the Khumbu region.

( It goes on and on.)

Nirmal “Nimsdai” Purja = The Nepalese Rosie Ruiz

[QUOTE] According to The Himalayan Times, Purja also used a helicopter to fly from Kathmandu directly to Everest’s Camp 2, a shortcut forbidden on Everest. Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority is currently investigating.

Nims is infamous for using helicopters to take short cuts between base camps so I can believe that he did this.

2023 greatest hits....

Give it time. Angelina is going to fall out with her two daughters by Brad.. Shiloh and Vivienne. She won't be able to stand the competition. Maddox and Pax will always be close to her and to each other. Maybe Knox will go with Vivienne. But Zahara and Angie will remain tight. Angie is toxic. I hope those kids realize it. She will manipulate them and cause them to be weak and dependent on her. Sick woman.

R213 only you and I get that one

Hey R217, I get it too! Wasn't that the marathon cheat who took a cab?

R216. Preach, maybe Angie will climb Everest and die.

[quote]R208 Top Nepalese mountaineer Nimsdai Purja is raging because another team sabotaged his expedition's climb by cutting the rope below the South Summit.

Haha!

R216, r217 - I considered attaching her Wiki bio but I figured since DL seems to be aging like I am... She took the train, I believe, and popped up close to the finish line. She also cheated at the NYC marathon that qualified her for Boston.

Looks like she had some later legal issues. Died from cancer.

Lots of dead bodies up there strewn about. It took 75 years to find Mallory's remains and his clothing had been swept away but since he was frozen, his muscles were still visible. I think that is SO cool.

[quote]r211 Unfortunately, corpses [also freeze solid and become fused with the ground.] Moving them requires hours of chipping away to detach them from the rock they've fused to.

This probably makes them more sturdy, tho, when people pose on them for pictures (?)

Sermon on the Mount Everest.

r221 Did they actually prove that was Mallory.? I found that documentary mostly supposition.

This is truly bizarre and pathetic...idiots passing eachother on a crowded, extremely narrow peak, with nothing but oblivion inches away from them.

I had no intention of posting that in the Everest thread. Sorry. It was supposed to be in the Brad and Angelina thread.

Everest has become so commercialized now it beggars belief! It is dangerous. The dangers cannot be overstated. IMO, these crowds can be explained with one word. Greed. Taking people's money and encouraging to try. They really need to stop doing that. I get it. There are thousands of climbers out here who always dreamed of summiting Everest. Tough shit. Some of them may not get to do that. But the government needs to limit the numbers. As I understand it, it is these climbing companies that take groups up there who are making the money.

Charge more for the permit. A lot. More. The Nepalese are the only people who deserve to benefit from the interest in this pursuit.

R224 it could have been another guy in 1920s climbing gear

No, people will always find the money—fundraising, sponsorship. Limit it to people who’ve climbed three 8000m peaks. Except too much money can be made by selling permits to thrill seeking tourists so…

Why is Everest such a thing? Are there any other mountains higher?

The thrill seekers are there anyway and find resources to pay large fees to the charter groups who facilitate the tourists self obsession.

I can't believe the footage of the queue to reach the summit, Starbucks has smaller lines during their rush.

No R231. Everest is the highest. It's not the hardest though, K2 is harder and more technical. Everest is a show of privilege. Fucking 15 year olds can climb it if they have the money. It's a status symbol.

[quote] Fucking 15 year olds can climb it if they have the money.

Technically you even don't have to really "climb"

Exactly R234. I'm sure some quadriplegics have evenn "climbed" it. The blind chick this year is probably not the first, if she did make it. You just need sherpa money and you're up.

There's only a two week window for climbing the mountain. In 1996 when the catastrophic climb happened, there were about 200 climbers. There are many more than that today.

Into Thin Air the movie about the climb is free to watch on FreeVee.

It's a lot easier when you're a witch. Fuck that permit fee.

[QUOTE] Charge more for the permit. A lot. More. The Nepalese are the only people who deserve to benefit from the interest in this pursuit.

80% of the expeditions on Everest these days are run by Nepalese climbers. The era of Western domination is long gone.

I'm sorry. I tried watching the Thin Air movie and it got ridiculous. I have no sympathy for these people. They got themselves in a tight spot and they died. WTF would anyone need to engage in such an extreme, dangerous adventure. It's pointless. It proves nothing. Serves no purpose. At least if you're an astronaut you can test out certain scientific stuff that benefits society. But this is total bullshit.

[quote] It's pointless. It proves nothing. Serves no purpose

I respect Mallory and his contemporaries wanting to be first. Not so much being in a line of hundreds a day.

I naively thought climbing up Everest was a personal achievement until I began reading about the money involved. These people are being dragged up and carried down by the Nepalese.

R239 Yeah, they're all pretty unlikable but Beck Weathers is the worst to me. He shouldn't have even been there since he'd recently had eye surgery. He's the epitome of rich, bored, guys with no sense of danger and an air of entitlement. His wife is an asshole too. After he survived Everest, he continued to do dangerous shit just for the thrill.

Sandy Pittman gets all the hate but in truth, she was wanted there. Scott Fischer wanted her for the publicity, if he could get her up, he would be able to get a lot more rich clientele. She was even encouraged to bring all the dumb shit she brought because she was working for NBC to "stream" it. They knew she'd be a pain in the ass and they had hired help for her. I think she behaved exactly as they thought she wouldand I don't think she was at fault for how it all went down that day.

Krakauer comes off as a misogynist in Thin Air. He constantly slags Pittman, but Pittman was an experienced climber and had been hired by a rich American television network to stream the climb. Krakauer was writing an article for Outside Magazine, not quite NBC. She had extensive media connections and he was jealous of that. He mentions she had sex with someone in the camp, but didn’t mention the name of the man she slept with (Stephen Koch)

Beck Wethers was a fucking asshole but is treated like Forrest Gump, an innocent guy who stumbled into a dangerous situation. It’s like “Yeah, he lied about having eye surgery….but he’s a manly man.”

Krakauer also was mad at Russian Anatoli Boukreev because Boukreev left other climbers and went back to camp by himself and he didn’t use supplemental oxygen. But Boukreev saved 2 people. Sadly Boukreev died a few years later in an avalanche.

For the posters upthread who were asking about why the descent is so deadly ...

I read several books about the 1996 Everest disaster.

The problem was the weather and the timing. There was a set, known window of time in which the climbers could safely ascend and descend (before weather precluded a safe exit).

I don't think it was the descent, per se, that was so deadly.

Some of the climbers were not in good enough shape to both ascend and descend (in the given amount of time).

They were taking too long to ascend and should have turned back, *before summitting*, but of course, no one could say no to summitting.

The slowpokes were holding up he progress of those in better shape.

I highly doubt a "drone" that can carry a dead human body weight, can manage in the air at the top of Everest.

Perhaps a drone can fly high and take a picture, but carry something? I doubt it. They can perhaps soar at high altitudes. But take off and land at high altitudes? Returning it back to you, dora dumbfucks.

"While modern helicopters are capable of flying at high altitudes, they are limited by the thin air and reduced lift. At the summit of Mount Everest, the air pressure is only about one-third of what it is at sea level, which makes it extremely difficult for helicopters to generate enough lift to take off or land."

(R224) It was Mallory. His name was sewn into his clothing and his personal letters were found in the pocket of his shirt. There is no doubt as to his identity.

It isn't just the altitude and the thin air, it's the winds up there. No drone could handle that. Now as far as the descent, I think what happened in 1996 was a storm. Un predictable, fast moving and strong. One of the sherpas said he had never een a storm like it. It came with no warning.

Can drones be equipped with robot ice picks to chip away at the ice adhering the bodies to the ground? Little robot chippers up there whittling away at the icy tombs. And can the drones take away the stone cairns people put on top of bodies to cover them from view?

R247 Thank you. Wonder what I watched. It really was a pile of shit.

Bring a flame thrower and a meat grinder.

R244 Preach! Yeah Beck's "aw shucks" shit was really grating, and yeah, Pittman was more wanted than Krakauer, he probably was envious she was NBC sponsored.

What’s the best DL thread about Beck?

We had a great Everest thread in '12 and I think another after it. I bet there's lots of Beck stuff in it.

[QUOTE] Yeah, they're all pretty unlikable but Beck Weathers is the worst to me. He shouldn't have even been there since he'd recently had eye surgery.

Nobody had had lasik surgery and then climbed 8000 metres before. He didn't realise that he'd become snow blind at a certain height.

R255 Presume nobody had done it as it was such an obviously fucking stupid thing to do.

He didn't realize he'd be snow blind but he did know you weren't supposed to be up there if you'd recently had surgery. I remember the scene with Fischer or Hall, I forget which, being kind of angry with him for not telling anyone that he'd had surgery and for climbing too soon after.

When I read Krakauer's book, I felt like there was more to the 1996 Everest disaster story. I ended up reading several accounts. I don't recall Beck Weathers coming off like an asshole.

More Nirmal “Nimdai” Purja drama. Accused of faking the cut rope story as another team summited that day and reported no issue with the ropes.

Recent summits: 10 people including sherpas. If that’s everybody, maybe it’s best to wait until the very end to avoid the queue?

Yeah but you run the risk of shitty weather at the end of the month. I wouldn't want to wait, there could be a storm.

R259 the weather is too unpredictable.

One of the things that struck me as I learned more about the 1996 tragedy, is Scott Fisher was too cavalier about taking precautions and too indulgent of his clients. Hall was the more responsible guy.

The movie Everest seemed to focus more on the individual climbers, and the movie Into Thin Air was more focused on the climb itself. I felt Thin Air was more authentic, more true to the experience of what happened to them. It explained more. Although both movies were good.

Interesting. Hillary summited on May 29. Mallory is thought to have done it on June 8 (Wikipedia) and didn’t make it back down.

I also found this : It is only when the winds die down in May and again for a short period in September that we have a so-called “Summit Window.” During these times, conditions are safe enough for climbers to try and reach the summit. The remaining months of the year are characterized by high winds and extreme temperatures, making climbing near impossible.

What’s the deal with September? It never says in the article.

When Hall died his wife was heavily pregnant.

When you think of the costs and the preparations involved in climbing Everest, as well as the dangers, it's something I would never consider. Ever. Although TBF, my vacations center around ruins andrubble, museums, architecture, works of art, fine music and great food. I require indoor plumbing, too.

She had summited with him in 1993 and had planned to go on this expedition until she became pregnant. Being able to talk to him at the top of the world during a raging storm with scant hope of rescue is mind blowing.

r265 It played live on TV here in New Zealand.

Jesus. That’s awful.

Didn't both Hall and Fisher die on that trip? Fisher was sick with liver disease.

Yes R268. They were both guides and both died and guided their clients to death.

[QUOTE] don't recall Beck Weathers coming off like an asshole.

He wasn't. Everyone liked him. The guy was tough as old nails and got up and walked when he was 90% frozen. Two expedition leaders and one guide died on Everest in 1996. Beck, miraculously, did not.

[QUOTE] They were both guides and both died and guided their clients to death.

Yet more ignorance. They were expedition leaders, not just guides.

Nobody died from Scott Fishcher's team because Anatoli Boukreev went out into the blizzard and rescued them from the Huddle just outside Camp 4. Only Scott died, high up on the mountain. He should never have tried to summit as he was ill with a liver condition and not sufficiently rested.

[QUOTE] They were both guides and both died and guided their clients to death.

Yet more ignorance. They were expedition leaders, not just guides.

Nobody died from Scott Fishcher's team because Anatoli Boukreev went out into the blizzard and rescued them from the Huddle just outside Camp 4. Only Scott died, high up on the mountain. He should never have tried to summit as he was ill with a liver condition and not sufficiently rested.

Fatalities from Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness

Rob Hall - expedition leader, Adventure Consultants

Doug Hansen - client, Adventure Consultants

Yasuko Namba - client, Adventure Consultants

Andy Harris - guide, Adventure Consultants

Scott Fischer - expedition leader, Mountain Madness

[QUOTE] Although TBF, my vacations center around ruins andrubble, museums, architecture, works of art, fine music and great food. I require indoor plumbing, too.

I like one vacation like that a year in Europe and for the other one I want to be as close to a tropical ocean as possible. An over water villa in the Maldives is ideal. Translucent turquoise water which is 30c and teeming with fish, turtles, dolphins. Superb snorkeling and every island is private so there's none of the beach hassle you get in the Caribbean and Thailand.

IIRC, Anatoli was the guy who climbed without oxygen tanks & was criticized for it. He redeemed himself by going back up the mountain and saving lives. I guess the tank would have helped others, even if he personally didn't need it.

Anatoli should have climbed with oxygen, but the only extra person he could have saved from his team was Scott. And if he'd spent hours dragging Scott down to Camp 4, he would not have been rested enough to go out into the storm and rescue Pittman, Fox and Madsen.

I can’t find anything about Scott Fisher having a liver disorder when I search. Does anyone have a link?

Fisher exhausted himself. He was at Camp II and heard a friend of his got sick at Camp l.,

So he climbed down from Camp 2 (21,000 ft) to Camp l (19,700 ft) and then took the sick guy down to Base Camp. (17,600 ft) . Then he turned around and went back up from base camp to camp 1, then back to Camp 2. That was a big strain.

He had climbed up 21,000 feet, claimed down 4,500 ft, then climbed up 4,500 again. So he added 9,000 feet of climbing that day.

Fisher no doubt still thought of himself as that strong young 14 year old kid he’d been when he started climbing. But he’d turned 40. I worked in hospitals for years and when it came to injury and accident the first thing we wanted to know was “How old is this patient?” A 22 year old has a better chance of recovery than a 40 year old. Forty is where you start the big slowdown. Even a little cut in your finger - you notice at 40 that it doesn’t heal up and disappear like when you were younger.

An extra 9,000 ft might have been fine when he was 22…but it wasn’t so fine at 40.

[quote] Anatoli should have climbed with oxygen

I’m not sure Scott climbed with oxygen. I know in a previous summit he hadn’t used oxygen

None of them exactly sound like Stable Mable to begin with.

here it talks about his liver condition Fischer’s energetic demeanor over the past few weeks belied his mental and physical exhaustion from leading the Mountain Madness expedition. Unbeknownst to most of the climbers, he suffered from a chronic liver condition that caused short but debilitating spells of fever when his body was under increased stress. Krakauer speculates that this may have contributed to Fischer’s lagging pace on summit day. Just past 3:00pm, Beidelman decides that he can’t wait for Fischer any longer and begins descending with five clients.27 here is a blurb about his liver

I thought I read that what killed Scott was blood clots on his lungs? R277 describes the situation pretty well. His lungs were compromised by all that up and down shit. The other thing that came out in the movie Everest, was that Scott was casual about things and while he was at base camp acclimatizing himself, he was also drinking and socializing, not getting enough rest.

In the movie Into Thin Air, they implied that Anatoli was somewhat responsible for the Japanese woman's death. She and Beck Weathers were lying in the snow and he just assumed they were already dead or close to it, so he left them and rescued the other two. When asked, he just said they were dead. The Beck comes stumbling down through the blowing snow like a zombie very much alive.

In the movie Everest, a lot was made of the oxygen tanks and how they didn't know how to operate them, didn't know if they were full or if they were low, didn't have enough of them, etc.

[quote] Unbeknownst to most of the climbers, he suffered from a chronic liver condition that caused short but debilitating spells of fever when his body was under increased stress. Krakauer speculates that this may have contributed to Fischer’s lagging pace on summit day

Hell yeah chronic liver disease would contribute lagging pace. The liver has its own circulatory system and it’s where clotting factors are produced, leading to bleeding . It can lead to protein deficiencies.

[italic] acute and chronic liver diseases are invariably associated with coagulation disorders due to multiple causes: decreased synthesis of clotting and inhibitor factors, decreased clearance of activated factors, quantitative and qualitative platelet defects, hyperfibrinolysis, and accelerated intravascular coagulation. The bleeding tendency accounts for increased risk of morbidity and mortality in patients with liver disease undergoing diagnostic or therapeutic invasive procedures [/italic)

I’d want to know - if I were paying $50-100,000 - if my guide/leader taking me into something called The Death Zone had chronic liver disease.

That was very much brushed aside in the accounts of the leaders of the two expeditions. A 40 year old with chronic liver disease., sheesh. “Oh it’s nothing, just chronic impairment of one of the most important organs in the body…you know, the one that uses 25% of cardiac oxygenation, delivers blood to the gastrointestinal system and regulates blood clotting.”

If you play in traffic, liver disease or not, I can only feel so much if you get hit by a car.

In a country with a 75% literacy rate and $1400 GDP per capita, what do they expect, six months of public commentary on rules and Kennedy School graduates writing policy guidelines?

R224, the documentary where they actually find Mallory is pretty good. There’s also a couple of decent books. They thought initially they found Sandy Irvine, but it definitely was Mallory. The list of items found with him was a bit haunting. Not found with him were the photo of his wife, Ruth, that he had planned to leave at the summit, and the camera he and Irvine were carrying between them, so the mystery of whether or not either of them submitted remains unsolved. I’m sure he would be horrified by what the Everest industrial complex has become.

Yeah I would think diabetes, and any type of bad liver would definitely be things that should keep people off Everest.

A sherpa can carry blood strips.

True R288. But you have to eat and take shots at your body's mercy and you burn calories so fast up there, it's not something I would want to risk.

Diabetes isn’t a chronic liver disease. It’s a disease of the pancreas

I know R290, I'm saying that things that should keep you off Everest besides a bad liver would be something like Diabetes.

If you have liver disease why drink before you climb a high mountain? A person with chronic liver disease should not drink at all

They like to edge with death

In Lene Gammelgard's book about the 96 disaster, she reveals that she was a close friend of Scott's (possibly one of his many lovers). She said he was in denial about his liver condition and hadn't sought treatment. His fitness and altitude tolerance was also compromised by the time he spent in Kathmandu with one of the Mountain Madness Sherpas who fell ill with HACE in the early days of the expedition and was in hospital.

Climb Everest virtually in 10 minutes. I don't think I'd be able to handle this sitting on my sofa in air conditioned comfort without getting wobbly and nauseous.

Is there a “climb Everest” video game? There must be: options like with and without oxygen, with or without a guide, getting stuck in the queue in the dead zone, high winds collapsing your tent… With sound effects like gasping for air. Not sure how to depict cold unless it’s something like the game controller buttons being “slow” to respond because your fingers are “numb”.

Maybe there's a "take off your ski mask and lose your nose" option too.

This just popped up on my Instagram, someone has collected a bunch of short video clips, maybe from documentaries showing how brutal it is. One scary clip is the Ice Doctors lashing three ladders together to cross a deep crevasse. It’s insane. When you cross in your bulky clothes and crampon boots, you only have two guide ropes as “railings”. Another clip shows a guy who pirouetted off the ladder, hanging upside down. I guess he was rescued but the clip doesn’t show it. Oh yeah, there’s more.

I can’t link but it’s mount_everest_expedition

Yeah the ice fall shit is so insane to me. These are people who have money and would never, in their real life, skimp on safety, like riding a moped as a passenger with no helmet on a busy street, but they fucking do the ice fall ladders that seem rickety and hold a million other people. The ice fall is the reason I would never do Everest and I have to give some begrudging respect to the people that do.

Ice fall ladders with broken rungs so you have to cross stepping on the side rails…

Also showing crossing crevasses without ladders. These people are NUTS.

Also, all the trash that’s up there? One thing never abandoned and left behind is the oxygen cylinders. Each one costs $600.

Final death toll for Everest 2024: eight.

Wow, five of those deaths were climbing with one company: 8K Expeditions (Nepali owned)

The last team has summited (from the Tibet side). The season is over. The ladders are being removed from the icefall. Do they remove the bolts and ropes further up? I can’t imagine they are usable year after year.

I'd bet my bottom dollar it was Cirrhosis of the liver.

Damn, too bad for 8K expeditions. I'm hoping they were at least the cheapest company since they were definitely the shittiest.

[quote] I'd bet my bottom dollar it was Cirrhosis of the liver

Could’ve been Hep B. I don’t think there was effective treatment back then and it had a bad connotation, associated with sex and drugs. People confused it with AIDS so families kept it quiet. Now there are treatments for Hep B and AIDS so people aren’t so freaked out by them.

But yeah, cirrhosis was also a bugaboo ….people still don’t want to admit to having it. And Scott was shrinking at base camp….then went up to Camp 2, then back down to base camp, and then back up to summit. Not a good itinerary.

[quote] was shrinking at base camp

Drinking. He was drinking at base camp. Probably was shrinking, too. It was cold. Shrinkage no doubt took place.

Cirrhosis was the disease of my parents' generation post WWII and older. All those cocktails like on Mad Men.

But I know of two old childhood friends, both women, who died of it in their 50s. One was grossly obese, fatty liver I guess. The other was built but never a fatty.

both were teetotalers

R306 forgot to sign their post, George Costanza.

I knew a guy who died of cirrhosis at the age of 29

R305 do you enjoy sharting out misinformation and ignorance, willy nilly?

There is no treatment for acute hepatitis B. You get over it or you don't.

There is treatment for Hep C.

Carry on, dora dumbfuck.

1) Where did I say he had *acute* hepatitis B?

2) There is treatment for hepatitis B. Like AIDS, there’s no cure. But there is treatment

[quote] As for summits, I estimate Everest had around 670 summits this spring, well below the 2019 record of 877. The final number will come from the Nepal government and the Himalayan Database in a few months.

[quote] From the Nepal side, I estimate 250 clients, supported by 350 Sherpas, summited, totaling about 600 summits. …Nepal issued 421 foreign permits, which makes for a 59% success rate…. On the Tibet side, I estimate summits by around thirty clients, supported by forty support climbers.

[quote] All eight of the 2024 deaths were clients with Nepali operators. In 2023, fifteen of the eighteen deaths were with Nepal operators.

This guy again! (“The ropes were cut and prevented my team from summiting”):

[quote] This week, one of Everest’s biggest new stars, Nirmal Purja (Nimsdai), was credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women.

𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐲'𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲

When Mallory's body was discovered 2,000ft from the summit in 1999, and researchers said they believed they had located where Irvine's remains were lying, there was renewed hope that more details about the fate of their trip.

However, in the years since Mallory's corpse has vanished and multiple attempts to find Irvine have come up empty-handed, sparking rumours that their bodies have been moved.

Ahead of the 100th anniversary of the pair's attempts to climb Everest, there have been fresh murmurings that China is involved in the strange disappearance of their bodies.

China has long claimed that three of its climbers were the first to make the ascent to the top of Everest - which straddles the border between itself and Nepal - from the north. READ MORE New book claims missing Everest climbers had problems with their oxygen tanks during 1924 mission article image

An expedition by three Chinese mountaineers in 1960 is widely believed to be the first to successfully summit from the Tibetan side, and certainly the first in which the expedition returned alive.

'We had GPS co-ordinates for where the body was. We flew the drone to that spot. We took photos. I feel if Mallory’s body was still there, we would have seen it. It doesn’t make any sense. Why remove the body?'

Jamie McGuinness, who has made it to the top of Everest five times from the Tibetan side and was also involved in the search, says the pairs' remains were almost certainly moved at some point in the 2000s.

He said: 'Irvine's body is almost certainly no longer up there. We gave it a good search with drones, and we spotted several other bodies, so we know we weren't missing anything of the right size.'

It has been suggested that authorities in China moved the bodies of Mallory and Irvine in a bid to cover up potential evidence that they may have made it to the summit before they tragically succumbed to the elements.

'We now have multiple sources all essentially saying the same thing: the Chinese found Irvine, removed the body, and are jealously guarding this information from the rest of the world – all to protect the claim that the 1960 Chinese team was the first to reach the summit...'

Nobody cares about the Chinese team of 1960 or even mentions them.

[QUOTE] This week, one of Everest’s biggest new stars, Nirmal Purja (Nimsdai), was credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women.

This is shocking if true.

Oh it's true R315. It's what happened to me in 96, totally not my fault.

No one seriously buys Pittman as the villain anymore

R317 Good. I feel bad for her and I'm glad to see recent videos exonerating her.

This spring, celebrated climber Nirmal 'Nims' Purja of Elite Exped made headlines for many wrongdoings in the mountaineering industry. The list includes holding illegal training for Elite Exped climbers above the Everest base camp, commandeering an illegal chopper flight to Camp II, circulation of misleading video on rope slicing above the South Summit and revelation of alleged sexual assault against his female clients among others.

Four bodies and 11 tonnes of rubbish recovered in the latest "death zone" cleanup operation, including that of American mountaineer Roland Yearwood, who died in 2017.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Chinese drones to replaces sherpas in transporting supplies and hauling trash off Everest, hoping to reduce casualties among sherpas.

[quote]In a flight test, the DJI FlyCart 30 could ferry 234 kg (516 Ibs) an hour, a task carried out by some 14 porters in six hours.

Why are these whores on the mountain in the monsoon season?

Those gigantic drones are gonna crash and flatten people.

John Krakauer who wrote Into Thin Air just published a couple of interesting new essays about the 1996 tragedy, designed to refute a Youtube troll who is insisting that the book is completely inaccurate.

Great article about John Krakauer and the 1996 tragedy.

New thread for the 2025 season