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

[Chefpig]

I have read a news article about the person who died on Everest 30 years ago, known as Green Boots and wondered if his body would have been preserved by the snow and icy conditions up there. After some reading, I believe his body would not have decomposed and so his face will be the same, still in his late 40's. Forever young.

You don’t see bodies in cemeteries and graveyards as they’re buried.

The bodies are left because it risks lives to get them down, carrying a dead body is different to guiding a maybe less experienced climber, in the era when JK wrote Into Thin Air there were companies basically saying they could get even climbers with limited experience to the top, for a price of course. There have been famous incidents where Sherpas went up to get bodies and died in the process. In the Death Zone I believe the rule is well known that if you get into difficulty you are on your own, partly because other climbers are so focussed on getting to the top, and partly because getting an injured climber down is a great risk for the rescuers basically dragging and manuovering a dead weight.

I didn"t know that either, but yes it is utterly compelling.

A YouTuber I follow is climbing Everest and it's changed how I feel about him.

Into Thin Air? Phenomenal book, he had a hit with Into The Wild directed by Sean Penn I think and got offered a magazine contract to write about the environmental damage on Everest as he was an experienced climber, then he was caught up in the biggest Everest disaster to that point and wrote about that instead.

Yes quite - I thought that was an odd comment to make when the difference between harrowed bodies in the open and memorials where human remains are buried deep underground is fairly stark!

One of the most disturbing was a woman who died up there in maybe the late 80"s early 90"s who was still strapped up to her back pack and when the wind blew she would lift up as if on a small parachute, her hair would blow back and the deterioration around her mouth made her teeth appear in a smile, her body was removed I think, her children could see that with a quick internet search.

Most members of the public are not strolling through Everest though? The people going up there know exactly what they will find and either don"t care or are too focussed on their own climb to notice, the physical/mental exertion required would make a dead body in the snow of passing interest anyway.

Yeah it's really sad and pretty unique the way lots of people die up there. And potentially their body could well be 'preserved'. Though I guess quite a few people's bodies might get moved down when it melts and eaten by predators.

I'd like to think people who died there understood the risks and died doing something they loved. Though sadly there must be quite a few that were avoidable and down to human error or negligence.

That's a fair point, but also another reason why the two things are not comparable in the same breath, it's exactly because the public aren't just popping up Everest to have a sandwich in their lunch hour - unlike lots of graveyards.

In the normal world that would be Jeffrey Dahmer/Dennis Nielson territory.

Hannelore Schmatz - strong winds blew her over the ridge of where she was resting in the end. Two people died trying to recover her body when it was still there. Which is just beyond tragic.

What I find compelling is Mount Everest is estimated to be 50/60 million years old and was left alone (as it should be) until 1953 when the first confirmed people (Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay) reached the summit. In the last 76 years, thousands have climbed it.

If you look at the photos online many are in the process of trying to remove clothing because the body heats up close to death from cold/alltitude, can"t remember the medical term? Adds another layer of disturbing oddness though, up there alone at great height trying to undress before you die because you think it is too warm.

There is a book about how it was named "Everest", obviously that isn"t the local name for it, can"t remember the title just now.

Was that Gelji Sherpa. He famously got someone off Everest on his back. But he was below the death zone where even he wouldn't have been able to do it. He runs AGA adventures. One of the founding partners is dead now. From a fire at a training hostel, of all things for an elite mountaineer.

Speaking of Everest, that story about the Sherpa with the miraculous recovery a month or so back was really odd and made me really question the relationship with the westerners who set up the guiding companies and the guides they employ

Dead bodies aside. Everest has become the world's highest garbage tip. It is totally violated with discarded oxygen bottles, camping gear, plastic wrappers and food waste along with human faeces and a myriad of other debris. Time it stopped.

Oh come on, surely you must understand why they are left? It is nothing to do with respect or disrespect.

Other people can die and have died trying to retrieve plenty of these bodies.

The first rule of trying to help even people who are still alive is 'don't become another casualty yourself'. The idea that you'd risk becoming another casualty in order to retrieve a dead body (not even someone still alive who can be helped) is just grossly irresponsible.

It's not just about having oxygen

And as pointed out, it's on the way down most die.

I used to think someone having climbed Everest was such an impressive feat. But now, whilst it's still an impressive physical feat, I really do just think 'selfish bellends'.

Sagar-Matha in Nepal. In Tibet it is known as Qomolangma.

Yeah I've heard that happening in those awful situations where a bunch of people try to enter a country via a refrigerated lorry. They all start stripping off and are found nude or semi nude. When the air runs out.

I guess it's similar at high altitude. It must feel almost like the air running out.

I don't honestly know why people go up big snowy mountains. It just feels almost inevitable that something awful would happen.

I completely agree. There was a British woman who kayaked down the Amazon by herself a few years ago. It’s the same sort of thing. She was warned she was in dangerous territory by locals but didn’t heed them, presumably because she felt she was entitled to her massive adventure and saying she had skipped a bit of the route would have undermined it in some way. She was killed overnight (and god knows what else). So so sad for her and her family, but this massive drive to do extremely dangerous stuff for … what ..?