A helium balloon large enough to lift a corpse, even a freeze-dried corpse, has to be enormous. A lot bigger than you seem to think. And it requires a truly enormous amount of helium. Like, a whole lot. A lot bigger than you think. It would be much much easier to carry the dead body down the mountain on your back than it would be to carry up a balloon and the multiple tanks of helium needed to lift it.
This article might give some idea of the difficulty: Cluster ballooning - Wikipedia.
To me trash should come down as much as possible. Not sure that makes the trip more dangerous. But even if it did, that would be just part of the rules to make the climb. If a person is not willing to bring their trash down, then just stay home.
Well I think it probably technically possibly to build a ropeway to the top of Everest but no one is going to pay the costs involved just to bring corpses down. I do believe it’s quite likely that sooner or later some Chinese billionaire will take it on themselves to try and construct a pressurised cable car to the top of everest from the North side, with a pressurised cafe, observatory and gift shop a couple hundred metres below the peak, and then with the option to go up to the peak in a pressurised suit lead upon a path where you’re clipped into a guide rail.
It would be fantastically expensive, but I think its technically possible if you use specially made high altitude quadcopters and remotely operated snowcat type vehicles with drills etc to do construction. The west would be outraged and think it’s incredibly tacky but there’s plenty of middle class Asians and Middle Easterners that would pay $2000 or so to go up the pressurised cable car and get guided in their pressure suits to the top to take a selfie.
Yeah, it’s basically 1 cubic metre of helium to lift 1kg. If we assume the live weight of a mountaineer to be 75kg and assume dessicated weight to be one third of that -25kg, we need 25 cubic metres of helium, which is a sphere less than 4 metres diameter. Big but not gargantuan. Surface area of 42 square metres - a litlle over a kilogram of silvered mylar.
But that is a lot of helium, I agree.
Doesn’t the. Lifting power of the helium change substantially at that height? It also expands substantiallt, is there any balloon material that could withstand the expansion, while also resisting puncture when it is blown against the rocks and ice? Keeping inmind that the cold would also a
Make the material more brittle.
Sorry, phone typing. You love me anyway!
I’m not sure it does. The ambient air is less dense, but that’s because the pressure is lower, so the helium should expand to be less dense than at sea level, so it might be a wash.
14,505 ft with Mt Whitney is my highest, and it wasn’t so bad, but I wasnt happy with my stripped down pack, let alone a body. I’d had spent several nites at Pear/Emerald lake at 8000 ft before so i was a little acclimated.
Well, we can look at it two ways:
They are dead and don’t care.
They are immortalized doing something they were willing do die for.
Now, I will admit that if you are on the way UP, and you see someone fall, you have to cancel your UP trip to try and rescue them, $100K or no. But if you are on the way down, and it’s too risky, i understand.
Last rites don’t necessarily involve a body. You can just hold a ceremony for the soul. As for the corpse stuck on Everest, I present to you : sky burial. AKA leaving the remains to the vultures, but in a holy sort of way ;).
What do you mean “fall”? As you are going up, someone ahead of you trips and falls on their face or someone ahead of you falls into a 40 foot crevice? You can help up the face plant victim stand up, but what do you do with the badly injured person at the bottom of the 40 foot crevice?
You try *your damnedest *until it’s no longer safe for you. Then you retreat back down the mountain.
Absolutely you do NOT do that. Ordinary climbers don’t have the equipment or skills to attempt that kind of rescue and if they do the most likely result is that there will be two or more bodies at the bottom of a 40 foot crevasse. Most of everest has cell phone coverage now, so you call to report the accident and then keep climbing. A rescue team of 5-6 sherpas with proper equipment will be sent from the nearest camp if possible.
Even in the far more common case where someone just sits down and can’t move any more on the side of the trail, its impossible for a single person to safely carry their weight. In such cases other climbers stop and provide oxygen or food, but ultimately they have to get going again and rescue themselves, its usually too late by the time a team gets there.
Pretty much once you enter the death zone on the way up, you get yourself back out of it again or you die. As far as I know there has never been a successful rescue attempt above 8000 meters that did not involve the climber recovering to the point they could walk themselves down. Everyone who signs up to climb is told this repeatedly and signs waivers about the risk.
More info in this article:
http://www.summitteambuilding.com/everest-rescue-above-8000-metres/
It would be interesting to know how many of those who attempt to summit Everest are in fact climbers of that skill level. I imagine it is much lower than we all think. Looking at various documentaries, etc., I see a lot of tourists who don’t even have some basic ability going for something that is way beyond their capability.
It would probably take several years of applying yourself to build the skill, strength, and endurance levels to “safely” achieve the summit.
Well, considerable expense and risk to life are already well accepted in connection with climbing Everest.
One way this could work is if Nepal and Tibet imposed a surcharge (say $2000) on the climbing permit fee (currently $11,000 per person in Nepal), to be used to finance cleanup operations. That would probably result in a small decrease in the number of climbers - which implies a corresponding decrease in the total risk to life (and thus an offset to the cleanup risks).
But Nepal is notoriously corrupt, and the Chinese who control Tibet climbing notoriously greedy - it’s not a good bet that those additional funds would actually get used for cleanup (or that the powers that be would tolerate a possible reduction in climbing fee income).
I have heard that they have installed ropes, ladders, and have cut in steps for some climbs so its not as hard now.
They’ve done so for the last 50 years. It’s still the hardest thing you’ll ever do.
Local sherpas put up the ropes at the start of every spring season. Very close to the top there is a ladder section which can get quite crowded which means people can get delayed at that spot while they wait their turn on the ladders.
The fee increase would be a reasonable proposal. Sherpas and other workers accept the risk to their lives for pay in any case (as do workers in other dangerous endeavors.) However, in addition to the corruption problem, it might still take a while to generate enough income to finance the removal of many bodies.
The aesthetic issue with the bodies could more easily be solved by burying them, in places where that is feasible. George Mallory’s body, for example, was covered by a stone cairn after it was found. I don’t know how many of the bodies are in places where they could be buried without risk of later exposure by wind or avalanches.
Traditionally, bodies are put into crevasses for burial. Or, if they’re hanging from ropes as at least one body was for years, the ropes are cut and the bodies sent over cliffs.
“Strength” and “endurance” are not quite as important as one might think. No one knows how the extreme altitude will affect them.
I was in my mid-twenties and had always been an athlete. Before I left for Nepal, I was running five miles a day, lifting weights and doing lots of stretching. In order to acclimatize myself, I followed the route that Hillary took and spent 2 weeks slowly hiking into the high altitude area rather than flying into Lukla (9,300’) like most people do.
I felt fine all the way to the hamlet named Lobuche (16,200’), but some where between there and Kala Pattar (18,500’), the altitude absolutely kicked my ass. It took every ounce of strength, endurance and will to make it up to the top of Kala Pattar (with its world famous wiew of Everest). It was like suddenly catching the worst flu you have ever had. Near the top I was literally taking two steps and sitting down to rest.
I can’t imagine anyone going over 10,000’ higher to the top of Everest.