Exactly, their families are mostly fine for the bodies to stay on the mountain. The Nepalese government is fine for them to stay on the mountain. Who the hell are you to stay they should be moved?
Three pages in and no one has mentioned the obvious solution–White Walkers!
Seriously…if climbers are now required to take out excess trash on the descent, I could imagine that they might in the future be required to sink a hook into a corpse and drag it down a hundred feet for the next descending expedition, and so on. But I don’t know why anyone would bother. If I had a relative dead on a big mountain that would be cooler than bunging them in a mortuary park.
And I don’t know why climbers are required to bring down excess trash. It’s a big mountain, few go up it, and the waste there isn’t exactly a global problem.
There’s a limited amount of room along the trail or at the higher campsites. Too much trash and there’s no longer room for climbers?
Re: removal of trash - why not the most obvious reason…
Because it’s ugly and rude?
May not be a pressing environmental concern, but why should we get to leave our trash wherever we please?
The Nepalese government obviously has a vested interest in the mountain continuing to look attractive.
The mountaineers maybe not so much - but they’re not the ones making the rules
There are insurmountable barriers to hauling bodies down without multiple people coordinating. The Hilary Step, the ladders, are already choke points that result in climbers waiting sometimes hours to get by. The idea of rigging a body for transport over those obstacles while other climbers wait won’t go over well. Much better to leave them where they fall, or toss them down a crevasse if one is handy.
Are there dead bodies above the Hillary Step? That would essentially be at the summit, right?
According to this list, at least 7 people have died “near the Summit,” although it’s not clear how many bodies there are. (Some are listed as “disappeared.”)
A lot of the bodies are above 8,000 meters.
Why not just send one the Great Eagles to fly up, pick up a corpse, and drop it in the nearest volcano? And maybe pick up a few empty oxygen bottles too, as long as it’s up there. “Killing two stones with one bird”, so to speak.
Thanks, Colibri and Fear. I did a little poking around myself, and it’s not clear whether there are any bodies actually at the summit, or whether anyone’s ever died up there. I got curious because someone upthread mentioned the Hillary Step as an obstacle to getting bodies down, but that would essentially mean the climber died at the summit.
Cause then you couldn’t make it into three books.
Apparently there are bodies at Hillary Step, if not above. It also sounds like the whole experience is a clusterfuck:
http://i.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/8707681/Everests-Hillary-Step-a-chaotic-mess
Mount Everest is a tourist attraction and many of the tourists are not fit for climbing 8000 meter mountains. There are of course a few solutions. What comes in mind is;
I. Introduce limits of climbs per seasons
II. Make the mountain accessible through secure trails.
The first options lower the amount of climbers and also decrease economic activity. The second options would likely increase the number of climbers but also take some of the challenge away. I lean on a mix between I and II.
Nepal has just introduced new rules on this:
“Permits to climb Everest will only be given to those who can prove they have already scaled mountains that are higher than 6,500 metres”
…
It is a great difference between a 6,500 meter mountain and an 8850 meter mountain. Only South America and Asia has mountains above 6,500 so I guess the tourism would stay in the region. How are you going to prove that you have climbed a mountain? Are they going to set up controls at top of a 6,500 mountain? People get killed for all kind of reasons. David Sharp had previous experience from Cho Oyu, worlds sixth highest mountain. In part it seems to be a paper tiger;
*“A ban on those people who are under 18, over 75 or disabled would not affect numbers substantially as such climbers are very rare. The first disabled climber ascended Everest in 1998, an American mountaineer who had lost part of one leg in a traffic accident. In 2001, a blind climber reached the summit. The mountain has been scaled by a 13-year-old and an 80-year-old.” *
I personally would go for making Mount Everest a safer through secure trails. There was another threat of building a Gondola. I wouldn’t go so far but there are other ways to keep the increasing tourism industry without creating a number of new laws.
How the hell are you going to build “secure trails” in such a harsh and hostile environment, nevermind the upkeep required due to the frequency of avalanches? Just walking up to the top, taking a picture of yourself there, and walking back down kills about 1 in 7 making the attempt in the most benign part of the year. You expect people to build these “secure trails” in such an environment?
How about using a really long bungee cord and giving everyone a shotgun. “Pull!”
But the guys who die on Everest don’t die because they slipped and fell or got robbed by gnarly Sherpas. They die because it’s called the death zone and there might be a reason for that, people.
Unless you propose upgrading the O2 contents of the atmosphere surrounding Everest (which, don’t get me wrong, I would love to watch as long as I’m not paying for it), then there’s little that can be done to make the climb less risky.