Hm, interesting. Looks like I may have had it bakcwards. According to Kimstu’s cite, there is a 10.3% death rate for “expeditions” on “all routes”… but for “climbers” it says “1.8%”. I’m a bit confused by that.
ETA: Ah, it says 1 in 10 expeditions has a death of one or more climbers.
Okay, I’m still confused by the other number.
Could it be those that summit vs, those that climb> Heck, I got nadda. My sample is way to small.
Yeah, the 1.8% death rate, if it includes all Everest climbers and not just those who attempt the summit, sounds more or less equivalent to the “1 in 50” death rate cited from the “mounteverest” link. 1.8% is about 2 in 100 or 1 in 50.
I was just trying to find some numbers, and what I got bewildered me.
Wow, and i am sorry, the numbers seem to be hijacked. Keep questioning, it’s the soul of these boards.
Going beyond the fact that people are crazy enough to waste money on something that will only serve to make them feel good for a couple of minutes a day and that this subject was pumped to death the last time some one was left to die on the way to the summit, is it possible that you could be more proud of your self for having climbed a mountain or saved a human life ? I know some jokers around here think life isn’t worth a whole hell of a lot but I couldn’t disagree more. I guess it’s a personal call as to when you cross the threshold of saving someone and possibly sacrificing your self. I’m glad I’ve got my pal Jesus to hold my little hand when the shit gets ugly . Left to my own devices I would probably run away like a scared kid crying all the way. It’s always real nice to see what happens when the rubber meets the road as it were. An escalator would be really nice though. A clear one so you could see the view maybe take some pictures for the family. Yeah, that would be real nice.
Oh, I’d totally use the “I was a HERO who carried a dying climber down Everest!” angle to get laid… Er… I mean to impress my girlfriend.
Way, way cooler to be the hero!
Don’t worry you’ll get old and tired some day too. And married.
sure to be better than “my boyfriend climbed Everest & all
I got was this lousy t-shirt”
I think we would all find The Parable of the Sadhu very interesting.
I’ve got one older than that.
Cain: Am I my brother’s keeper?
God: You bet your sweet ass you are.
(Super Duper New Revised International Version)
Okay, I could be completely wrong about this, so by all means correct me if I am.
Could this actually be a unique situation? What I gather is that the conditions on Everest are so brutal that after a while, people just aren’t in their right mind, no matter what their “right mind” is under normal conditions. The combination of high altitude, low temperature and low oxygen may be clouding everyone’s judgment even before their vitals fall to a dangerous level. I mean, Krakauer said on the first page of Into Thin Air that by the time he reached the summit, he was basically reduced to “Top of the world that’s Tibet BFD I need oxygen…Oh man, people are coming UP?! And I have to STAY HERE?!” Don’t know if he’s typical, of course, but that sounds like someone who’s lost perspective on most everything.
I mean, I can think of two other sports where people have to work together under rough conditions (not as rough as Everest, though) with the possibility that one or more of them might die: sailing, and white-water rafting. But you don’t seem to hear much about amateur sailors or white-water enthusiasts leaving a team member to die. Mostly climbers, and mostly on Everest.
So perhaps Everest is simply not comparable to other situations. The same guy who would risk his own life to save his buddy on the Colorado River might, on Everest, be honestly convinced that the other same guy really wasn’t hurting that bad whatever I gotta get to the next station. Or I could be wrong. As I said.
Maybe, but keep in mind that another group of climbers, who were already trashed from having summited, actually had the faculties to effect a rescue.
Sailors sometimes face a similar dilemma. I have heard instances of a crewmember going overboard in extreme conditions, leaving the other crew with the options of either trying to turn around and beat into the conditions to find the lost crew, or accepting they are gone and sailing on. Turning around being extremely difficult, highly dangerous to the yacht as a whole and unlikely to be successful, a dilemma is created. I have heard of racing yacht crews who have agreed beforehand that they will not turn back if someone goes o/b in such conditions.
I’ve never climbed a mountain in my life, but this radical objectivist school of mountaineering seems fucked in a non-moral sense. Shared danger normally brings people closer together–cops, soldiers, fire fighters stand by each other no matter what, because each entrusts their life to their comrades and knows they can either work together or die alone. Abandoning someone because it’s inconvenient to help–can someone who does that even be a good mountain climber? I wonder if the ones who do that aren’t those Mt. Everest tourists with more money than experience or skill.
People keep saying that it’s deadlier to attempt a rescue than to leave a stranded climber be.
I wonder what the death rates are for those who attempt to make a rescue of a stranded climber vs. those stranded climbers themselves are, and how many attempts ended in the deaths of the rescuers vs. how many resulted in a successful rescue of a stranded climber with no deaths.
Exactly. It seems that climbers with absolutely no medical training are making decisions related to the survivability of climbers on the mountain. Not only that, wild claims of the dangers of rescue are being made without any sort of evidence to back them up. It seems to have become almost axiomatic within the Everest climbing community that rescue attempts are deadly affairs, which is ridiculous, given the story in the OP.
The last abandoned climber story, where Hilary weighed in, had a doctor claim that the casualty may have nearly fully recovered if he had been given oxygen by any one of the dozens of teams that trudged past him.
I’m not convinced by this at all. Soldiers coming under intense enemy fire regularly go back to help fallen comrades. Rather, I think Everest seems to attract the scum of the earth.
Deciding to abandon all ethical principles is not a “code,” it’s just selfishness.
I can sum that up for you:
Warning: Mountain may contain sociopaths. Climb at your own risk.