Ok, looking at the pictures ttt posted I have some technical questions.
How the fuck does that even WORK? What happens when you reach the summit? Is there an egg timer up there so you can stand on top of the mountain and take in the vasty space around you until your 2 minutes are up and then you have to turn around and make room for the next 3000000 people?
Since when is everest a fucking amusement park ride? If the top of the tallest mountain in the world is more crowded than the women's bathroom at a NKOTB concert I can only conclude that we just have too damn many people in this world.
Post by vanillacourage on May 29, 2013 8:23:11 GMT -5
I wonder if the glut of people has actually made the climb even easier. Paths being worn down in the ice, others sharing oxygen with you in an emergency, etc.
I can't believe the 2nd picture that sbp posted. If I had to wait in line to summit Everest the way that you have to wait in line for a changing room at Forever 21, I'd feel like my experience was really cheapened.
Also, I am reminded of a line in a Terry Pratchett book (I think?) about how obviously things are easier to get to once they've been found once. It takes the first guy years of preparation and 5 dead sherpas to make it to the top, but 10 years later grannies toddle up there before tea time and then climb up again because they think they forgot their glasses. (paraphrased obviously)
I wonder if the glut of people has actually made the climb even easier. Paths being worn down in the ice, others sharing oxygen with you in an emergency, etc.
I can't believe the 2nd picture that sbp posted. If I had to wait in line to summit Everest the way that you have to wait in line for a changing room at Forever 21, I'd feel like my experience was really cheapened.
Yeah, knowing that's what it's like would remove all possible drive to go for me. Not that I want to climb everest, but it's the kind of thing that I think "wow, that'd be cool to do" except...no. Not like that. That doesn't look cool. That looks awful.
I wonder if the glut of people has actually made the climb even easier. Paths being worn down in the ice, others sharing oxygen with you in an emergency, etc.
I think it's probably a double edged sword. Having to wait for the people in front of you means more time spent in the Death Zone, wasting energy, losing oxygen. But because there are so many people now, the sherpas set lines, wear paths, and even set up ladders for people to use to make things easier and faster. So it's probably both.
I think it's interesting that the climbers who were attacked by a mob of sherpas this year claim that it was because the sherpas were angry they were using a different path and climbing alone. Helping people get up the mountain is their livelihood. They don't want it to go away.
Ok, looking at the pictures ttt posted I have some technical questions.
How the fuck does that even WORK? What happens when you reach the summit? Is there an egg timer up there so you can stand on top of the mountain and take in the vasty space around you until your 2 minutes are up and then you have to turn around and make room for the next 3000000 people?
Since when is everest a fucking amusement park ride? If the top of the tallest mountain in the world is more crowded than the women's bathroom at a NKOTB concert I can only conclude that we just have too damn many people in this world.
Pretty much. Because the summit push is all about the Death Zone, you can't stay up there very long, and there are best times of the day to be ascending and descending, so it pretty much works as a big line. But at a certain number of people (which is huge on a good weather window) its just too slow, an slow is deadly in the Death Zone.
The one thing that really makes Everest unappealing to me (cause I'm otherwise fascinated) is that you're dying on the summit, and experiencing some degree of cerebral edema. It's just not physiologically possible to really be "there" and fully appreciate it.
I googled Mt Everest deaths last night and came upon a creepy video that showed a bunch of dead bodies that are just lingering along the way. It was macabre as hell. Second, can we stop with comparing this to slow people who run marathons. That is apples and oranges.
Ok, looking at the pictures ttt posted I have some technical questions.
How the fuck does that even WORK? What happens when you reach the summit? Is there an egg timer up there so you can stand on top of the mountain and take in the vasty space around you until your 2 minutes are up and then you have to turn around and make room for the next 3000000 people?
Since when is everest a fucking amusement park ride? If the top of the tallest mountain in the world is more crowded than the women's bathroom at a NKOTB concert I can only conclude that we just have too damn many people in this world.
The summit is actually somewhat roomier than the Hillary Step (photo you're talking about). Plus, you don't have 2-way traffic getting in each other's way. And lastly, as pescalita pointed out, you are literally dying when you're up there. Your body cannot sustain life in the death zone for very long, so most people don't actually want to stay at the summit for long. So if your record number of summits in a day is 230 and they're there over 2 hours, you have maybe 4-8 people actually at the summit at a time for a couple of minutes each.
I have not climbed Everest myself, but have climbed a bunch of other mountains and most summits are roomier than you might expect.
I googled Mt Everest deaths last night and came upon a creepy video that showed a bunch of dead bodies that are just lingering along the way. It was macabre as hell. Second, can we stop with comparing this to slow people who run marathons. That is apples and oranges.
Yeah, I was going to respond to publius that the cemetery is on the damn mountain. They should have little signs with how each person died and their level of expertise.
Post by Velar Fricative on May 29, 2013 9:34:20 GMT -5
The pictures definitely put it into perspective. That can't be safe. Like I said before, I couldn't care less that Rich Couch Potato Joe pays for the chance to climb Everest because, hey, if he kills himself doing it, that's his own damn fault. But I can definitely see from the pictures how these crowds could be hazardous for everyone.
I googled Mt Everest deaths last night and came upon a creepy video that showed a bunch of dead bodies that are just lingering along the way. It was macabre as hell. Second, can we stop with comparing this to slow people who run marathons. That is apples and oranges.
I brought it up because the article in the OP smacked of the same type of elitism that I've sensed among elite and/or experienced runners in my experience. I don't actually think climbing Everest is just like running a marathon.
Thanks to this (and the earlier Nov thread) I just finished Into Thin Air. I am fascinated and so wrongly googled Scott Fischer images....I mean I know there are bodies there but yeah, passing by these skeletons on your way up...AHHH!!!
Under the Banner of Heaven is one of my all time favorite books.
Anyway, because of this thread I put my name on the ebook hold list for Into Thin Air at the library. Whoever has it needs to finish it, because I'm 1st in line. booyah.
Yeah, for any of you who have not discovered Krakauer-- his subject matter alone is awesome. I personally think he is a compelling storyteller, as well.
Into Thin Air got even more interesting afterward because the guide Anatoli Boukreev disagreed with Krakauer's depiction of him, wrote his own version of the book, and he and Krakauer had a pissing match back and forth, each of them writing back and forth in the media to each other.
If you want to really skeeve yourself out, google Beck Weathers and check out his frostbite. WARNING!
To make this CPE-related, Beck Weathers became a fairly outspoken Tea Partier.
Into Thin Air talked about how he liked to talk about politics and was very conservative. I wondered if his experience had changed his views at all, but apparently not.
I think this is officially going to be my summer obsession...since I just finished Into Thin Air, I'm about to start Touching the Void. My library doesn't have The Climb so I'll have to find that somewhere else. I spent a good part of the workday today googling certain "characters" to find out their stories, see pictures (eek!!) and look at photos of the spots he talked about so much in the book. Absolutely fascinating... I feel like I am going to need a new "theme" by the end of summer though!
Do you guys remember a few months back, a group released a super zoomable photo of Everest, from base camp up? It was incredible. They took it down now. I seriously started crying in my cube because I wanted to zoom in on all these places.
It is. It will enrage you about bush v gore and the iraq war all over again.
He also wrote Three Cups of Deceit about that whole 3 cups of tea scandal.
Under the Banner of Heaven is one of my all time favorite books.
Mormons seem to universally hate Under the Banner. The internet is full of defenses and accusations. The reviews on Amazon alone have a few dimensions of crazy. But I don't view it as anti-LDS at all. Rather, I just think historical facts are always fairly damning. More than anything, he just wanted to explore extremism and faith turned violent, using the Lafferty brothers as the springboard and the backdrop.
That they hate it is praise IMO. Its accuracy is what makes it threatening enough for them to freak out about it.
I just looked up some of the negative Amazon reviews. One of them saying he was completely off about how Elizabeth's Smart's mormonism could tie into her kidnapping. Didn't she just say that its message and the abstinence/broken element was a huge part of it?
And of course people saying that if you want to know about Mormon history you should ask a Mormon. smh