AIBU to be blown away by this? TW - Deaths on Everest.

I can't pretend to know much about this, but I can't understand the point of doing it if you don't do much of the climbing yourself...where is the achievement? I can sort of understand experienced climbers who've trained hard for it wanting to do it but why do it if you're going to be practically carried up? And littering the place? Poor Sherpas!! It does indeed seem very selfish and pointless!

Alison Hargreaves was at least an accomplished professional climber. Most of these twats on Everest are tech bros, high earning doctors etc just doing it because they have enough money to throw at it.

Many of the more recent Everest climbers have "summited Everest" in the same way I might be able "run" a mile in 03:59 minutes if I wore roller skates and hung onto the back of someone's moped. 😆

In 1923, famed mountaineer George Mallory uttered one of the most famous quotes of all time when asked why he was attempting to summit Mount Everest. “Because it's there,” he said.

A fact that blew me away was that more people have climbed Everest than have achieved a sub 4 minute mile. The two feats were first achieved at a similar time I believe.

I will say that those attempting Everest aren't necessarily climbers. It's not a technical climb, and the Sherpas string fixed ropes so everyone is just jumaring their way up.

It's obviously still very dangerous due to altitude and weather, but it's no K2.

He was AWFUL about Anatoli Boukreev as well. The man was a hero, and he tried to cast him in a villian role.

Most climbers are selfish and self-absorbed. I have watched so many documentaries Touching the Void, The Dawn Wall, Everest, Free Solo, Mehru, 14 Peaks and so on - and whilst they are fantastic, there is ALWAYS an element of selfishness about the people who climb - especially Everest. Little thought or care for those who are left worrying about them, under-prepared with no consideration for the people who will have to put their lives at risk during a rescue effort, pressure on Sherpa's to climb in less than ideal conditions and just a lot of "it was the ultimate goal" and "It was the one peak left" - all such macho bullshit.

There is also an accepted 'coldness' (excuse the pun) in climbing when it comes to leaving injured or deceased colleagues on mountains. Simon Yates for example, gave up on Joe Simpson in 'Touching the Void' - wrongly as it turned out.

But it's all about me me me

Loads of posters reacted to my post when I said it was funny!!

I thought it was hilarious. But perhaps not a joke? 😂

OH, my. Into Thin Air is pure fiction.

For instance, pretty much everything John Krakauer said about Sandy Pittman turned out to be untrue - easily disproven by photos taken that day - but men do love blaming women for their own fuck-ups.

The author has gotten caught in so many lies he's had to re-write the book several times and is still getting debunked.

Michael Tracy's done a series of videos on the subject.

It seems a very extreme way to try and kill yourself.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k1xkllknmo

this story solidified my belief that you should never trust a climber

What blows me away are the sheer number of people traipsing up Everest - there's footage where it looks like a queue. I wonder if it minimalises the amount of effort needed.

One of the well known TV adventurer types, was it Ant from the SAS shows ?filmed his own attempt at Everest (I think weather turned them back) and there was a scene where one climber they were talking to doesn"t know how to lace his boots up properly, they tell him he needs to go back but he ignores them.

Crikey. Poor guy!

Somebody on Reddit recently found a possible body on Google Maps, and the location correlates very closely to Green Boots (or possibly another missing climber, can't remember the exact details). People have calculated that the shape is roughly the same heigh as a human and it's an unnatural rusty colour that sticks out from the green background.

Rob Hall

They now have to take their shit with them.

8000 people have died on Mont Blanc over the years but as a rate per climb it is very low because of the 10s thousands that do it. But the reports put around 100 deaths a year to: 'people treating the mountain as a casual hike rather than an alpine ascent and not being prepared or having the correct equipment'
Literally thousands of people think climbing Mont Blanc is a casual hike.
It's incomprehensible.

The guy who was lost for two days and came staggering back into one of the camps during the night all frost-bitten, Dr. Beck I think, he became quite famous after that and moved into motivational speaking, decided later through therapy that going to Everest repeatedly and failing to reach the summit was subconsciously an attempt at suicide due to deep dis-satisfaction with various elements of his life

In ‘The Ascent of Rum Doodle’ a recurring theme is the Brits getting stuck and the local guides getting them out of the mess or the local guides taking on the hard jobs (hacking ice steps/setting ropes) and the Brits are impressed by their quick learning!

Though I guess quite a few people's bodies might get moved down when it melts and eaten by predators.

At that altitude it doesn't melt and there are no predators. They'll be there forever...

🤣🤣 So true though!!

A disturbing section in Into Thin air is when one of the lead climbers from a climbing guide company gets hopelessly stuck near or in the Death Zone with no hope of rescue (and he would have known this better than most) and he gets patched through on a satellite phone to his wife in New Zealand just before he died, they used radios, he had one that could reach a lower camp, and they could transmit to base camp and they had the satellite phone to reach New Zealand, something like that, it was covered on the bbc or ITN news at the time and I remember finding it extremely disturbing and sad, reading about it again years later just brought back the facts of desperate finality that come with getting into trouble on that mountain.