Which isn’t applied in the most dangerous situations…
Part of it is that survival is so dicey that you don’t want to carry anything you don’t absolutely have to. There are also a lot of novice “adventurers” going up and they don’t necessarily respect the environment.
I don’t see much need to respect an environment in which nothing visible lives, so long as the litter doesn’t get too excessive
I recently watched a show about a group summiting Everest. There were two groups at a base camp. Two of the climbers (one from each group) by chance, had climbed together before. One got altitude sickness and the other abandoned him to continue to the summit.
Obviously the one abandoned survived (I believe rescued) Both men retold the story for the cameras.
It was facinating, you could see the distrust the one man had for the other. Even saying he felt sorry for the ones traveling with his old companion, who took risks for his own means. He was polite but you could tell there was a sense of extreme dislike for the man and definitely no respect.
The other man (The guy that went ahead) Said it was either rescue his partner or not get to the summit. He made his choice and said he did not regret it.
Except one thing… As he is saying this every so often his eyes would dart to the other fellow in the distance. I may have been reading too much into the expression but there seemed to be guilt there. He can be relieved that the other fellow survived but he had nothing to do with that.
I mean how does one live with themselves if the only reason they let someone in their immediate area die so that they can finish what is essentially a self agrandizing task?
How do you live with the fact others look at you as a selfish monster or at the very least see your accomplishment as tainted I mean doesn’t that make everything you did meaningless?
I only mentioned it with respect to the idea of Everest being crazy busy and extremely accessible. There are a lot of photos of Everest looking more like garbage landfill site than a mountain. Some sportswear company (Nike or Reebok?) had a poster of Everest that looked like a dump. The Clean Everest Expedition cleared off 1,300 kg off the southern slopes. That ranks as “too excessive” to me.
I must admit I was ignorant of how bad it had become… bloody hell!
but shouldn’t we let the community of mountaineers judge their own behavior on the mountain?
I have never been less sure of adding my comments to a thread, but here goes.
I had the distinct pleasure of calling Barry Bishop my friend. I spent many hours in in conversation with him after National Geographic banned indoor smoking. Saddly, he died son after his retirement, aseelp at the wheel, and still thinking that a seatbelt would not save him.
I present Cite 1 and Cite 2 and most important Cite 3 . I spoke a lot with Barry regarding risks and rewards. My time in the Coast Guard gave me one perspective, as a rescuer; his time on Everst, being rescued, gave him another. One thing I am sure of, Mr. Bishop would never leave another climber behind. The summit was important to him, but not moreso than his humanity.
Take from this what you will.
Related question: Anyone know the stats of sherpa deaths?
There is a big difference between being in a danger you chose to be in and explicitly having a “no rescues” pact. I wouldn’t ever enter such a pact, but if such a thing exisited among the party (and there is no evidence that it did–it was speculation in this thread), then I guess it’s morally ok to abide by it. That’s not at all the same thing as doing something you knew was dangerous but where you had every intent of helping your teammates and others as needed only to find yourself abandoned.
I can’t buy this. It’s not like a “no extraordinary measures” clause in a hospital. You don’t climb a mountain expecting to die, like you enter a hospital. Kownimg you could die and expecting to die are entirely different.
Yes. And I should be free to say bloody hell and have the mickey taken! 
Considering something like 10% of people who try to climb Everest die (and as a WAG the proportion amongst amateurs is higher) it’s not unresaonable to anticipate death.
If it is 10%, and i have no cites to dispute you, OK, Darwin is at work. OTOH, I still think that real climbers might chose to save members of their party over summiting, but that was from Barry.
ok, so your assholishness here is intentional. good to know.
This article on Everest expeditions between 1980 and 2002 (pdf) shows the death rates for climbers and for “H-A [high-altitude, I presume] porters”, which I suppose means Sherpas. The climbers’ death rate over all ascent routes was 1.8% and that of porters 0.6%.
By the way, the article notes that the climbers’ death rate over this period was less than half that for climbers attempting K2 between 1954 and 1994. Everest is by no means the deadliest mountain out there; it’s just got (IMHO) the worst combination of deadly conditions and high proportion of inexperienced climbers.
The hey?? That’s a far higher death rate than the above cite indicates. What’s the source for this number?
10% actually sounds reasonably close to the mark. IIRC, there are about 2,000 people who have summited (giver or take a dozen) and about 200 who have died on the mountain (give or take a dozen).
Kimstu the summit vs. death stats you can look up with a quick Google search. I think there is a website called Everest news or something that actually has the latest stats on the numbers that have reached the summit.
The much lower number you have for fatalities looks like it’s for all climbing routes on the mountain. But if you look only at the numbers of the last leg of the journey to the summit, it’s much much higher. There are a ton of other Everest routes that don’t go anywhere near as high as the Death Zone.
BBC News claims one in 11; mounteverest claims one in 50.
The same as the post below yours… Around 2000 have reached the summit, 200 have died.
I think it’s fairly reasonable to exclude those who have attempted to reach the summit, as they’re much more likely to compromise and rescue other climbers, but “YMMV”.
Even 1.6% is a hell of a death rate!
And wring, I don’t get you.
Look, my resource is gone here, and I miss him. i was really talking about attitudes and not numbers.
Everybody Darwin leaves on the mountain inproves the species.