Hey there’s an idea. Run a long oxygen line up the trail, with oxygen tents strategically placed so climbers in distress can catch their breath.
Maybe so, but if people who haven’t gone past 6500 meters are overrepresented in the Everest death/rescue statistics (compared to people who have climbed mountains > 6500m), then this new rule might be a useful screening tool. 6500 meters means people who have done walk-up climbs like Kilimanjaro would be ruled out; they’d have to get experience on taller mountains, which almost certainly means more technical climbing that provides them with some experience using ropes, crampons, ice axes, and so on.
So I suppose the next relevant question is: are people who haven’t gone past 6500 meters overrepresented in the Everest death/rescue statistics?
A secure trail is a broad concept. They already have fixed ropes and ladders on difficult paths. I advocate that one should do more. I think the key is not to make the death zone safer but the mountain below. It would be cool if they built permanent housing at camp 4. Yes, I expect people to build secure trails. It is mostly a matter of will and money. It is not an impossible task.
To be frank, I have no Idea how the statistics looks like. I’m speculating. What I understand it is a mix of inexperienced climbers and the numbers of climbers which drives the number of deaths. It may also be so that the statistics of death climbers go down. I have seen all kind of numbers.
I advocate that they should do less. You can’t “fix” the Ice Falls. You could conceivably build more permanent shelters at Camp 4 but constructing them would be a horror show, and without a constant resupply of supplemental oxygen it would just make the situation worse. You’ll end up with tombs up there, full of exhausted climbers who should have turned around but were lured upward by the relative safety of Camp 4.
The Death Zone is aptly named. There’s no way to make is significantly safer in the long term. There’s no way to reduce the number of deaths without restricting the number of people up there and increasing their experience level. Without that, things will continue on pretty much as is.
The thing I’ve often thought might genuinely improve safety is if you could run a power line up to Camp 4 (probably from a generator at base camp) and then get an oxygen concentrator up there. Right now the amount of supplemental oxygen climbers use is limited by the huge amount of effort required to haul it up the mountain, but if you could just refill the canisters up there they could use a lot more. (Plus bonus litter reduction!) You could also station a doctor up there with some hyperbaric chambers and have at least a bit more of a chance of saving exhausted/altitude sick climbers.
Getting the stuff up there would be a bit of an undertaking initially, but not any less than the constant ferrying of oxygen and supplies that happens every season. I imagine large sections of the power line would also have to be rebuilt at the beginning of the climbing season and it would require a certain amount of repair during it, but that’s not that different than the current amount of work that goes into keeping the route open.
You are right. If you built permanent shelters you will end up with even more inexperience climbers that seek refuge in the permanent shelters. I guess it would work if screening and the numbers was reduced but maybe not. I’m inclined to compare Mt Everest with Mt Blanc and current technology. People do not take responsibility in the first place.
I think you overestimate the abilities of oxygen concentrators and hyperbaric oxygen chambers to operate at 26,085ft (the altitude of Camp 4). To concentrate significant amounts of oxygen at that altitude is going to take a huuuuge amount of power. And time. I suspect it might be prohibitive, due to inefficiency. While the military does use such Oxygen concentration devices up to 50,000 feet in their aircraft, theirs are powered by the jet engines to achieve enormous compression ratios.
Perhaps an oxygen generator might serve, but I know little about the power requirements or the supplies needed to produce oxygen for them. Even so, one will still need to take the generated oxygen and compress it for use in a tank or chamber.
In short, I think it’ll take more than a basic power line to Camp 4 in order to produce concentrated oxygen in significant quantities there.
People constantly misunderstand the equations with respect to altitude. The response to getting into trouble up high has never been to provide more resources; the only proper response is to go down. All these safety schemes do is put more people in danger by attracting them to an area that is doing its best to kill them.
If people insist on going up there in large numbers, people will die. In many ways, this isn’t a flaw in the system, it’s a feature. It’s what drives people to go up there.
“Damn you attractive nuisance, damn you to hell!!”
Mt. Everest body retriever: Wind! Stay Calm!
Wind: Yawsuh yawsuh yawsuh!!!
I don’t see why any of that would be harder at high altitudes (other than the obvious practical considerations.) The proportion of oxygen in the air is still roughly the same at high altitude, so the various processes used to concentrate it should still work more or less the same regardless of total atmospheric pressure. Compressing it for bottling would be theoretically more difficult, but since we’re talking about compressing to 2000-3000 PSI, it’s not going to be a huge difference starting at (letseehere…) 5.2 PSI at 26k feet instead of 14.7 at sea level.
Assuming I’m right about that, creating bottled oxygen does use a lot of energy, but not an insane amount. Here’s some specs on some portable oxygen plants: http://www.oxywise.com/en/products/mobile-oxygen-filling-station Even the one that makes 25 cylinders a day would be a pretty major game changer, and that only uses 14 kw. (Granted, yes, those ones weigh several tons, but the weight is mostly the intermodal crate they’re built into. There’s portable ones like this out there too that I’m sure could be scaled up a bit and still be manageable.)
And, yeah, by “hyperbaric chamber” I wasn’t necessarily thinking something like you’d find in a hospital that’s full of nearly 100% oxygen, but rather simply having the ability to pressurize a small space down to a somewhat lower altitude-equivalent pressure. So instead of having to get a sick climber down to a lower camp absolutely ASAP, you could simulate a lower altitude for at least a short while.
Yeah, that’s not going to work.
If you’ve got the math that says it can concentrate oxygen at that level, I’m in no position to argue it. I based my supposition on the fact that most portable oxygen concentrator systems don’t guarantee their systems over 16K feet or so.
And I think you underestimate the stresses on the machinery at that altitude. It’ll spend most of its time up there in temperatures lower than zero fahrenheit, often much lower, to like minus 60 or more. Either that or it’ll need to be hauled up and back down every season, or hauled up, abandoned and replaced every season.
Maybe there are engineering solutions to all this; I just suspect it’s a lot more complicated that it seems on initial blush, and that the devil will be in the details. Bringing and maintaining moderately high tech equipment to 26K feet will be rife with challenges.
But I’d love to read a thorough discussion of them, along with proposed solutions.
The thing with those is that they’re just concentrators. By increasing the proportion of oxygen in the air, you can get a partial pressure of oxygen that’s equivalent to a lower altitude, but that only works to a point. Once the atmospheric pressure gets low enough, you simply aren’t breathing in enough molecules even if you’re breathing 100% oxygen. The machine still concentrates oxygen in the air just fine, it’s just that at higher altitudes you need pressurization too.
I think you’re overestimating them. No denying it’s cold up there, but not any colder than places like the North Slope of Alaska or other places where humans use all sorts of complicated precision machinery. The only thing that’s really uniquely extreme about it is the altitude, which (I believe) wouldn’t make much of difference to any of the equipment I’m proposing to haul up. Yes, you would clearly need to build some sort of shelter to get it out of the wind and would need to heat it when it’s running, but I don’t see why you couldn’t just leave it up there when you’re not using it.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a major engineering undertaking, but it wouldn’t be a completely zany possible-only-if-we-assume-infinite-money-and-lives type thing like building a chairlift.
I realize that everyone has a right to an opinion, but unless you have actually been to EBC, you have no idea how insanely difficult these ideas on modifying the climb are.
EBC is in the absolute middle of nowhere. The tiny airfield at Lukla is the only place to bring in supplies. And only very small STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) aircraft can land there. A Twin Outter is what I flew in. Its weight carrying capacity is very limited.
And this airfield is at least a difficult one WEEK hike away from EBC!!!
Some people ask about the town of Namche Bazar and getting supplies there. Virtually everything in Namche is flown in from Lukla, a two day hike (a few things are trekked in by Sherpas from as far away as the trail head at Jiri. (One can take a bus from Kathmandu to Jiri.)
When people suggest bringing this kind of equipment or that kind of machinery to Everest, they have no clue how hard it would be to get it just to EBC. And then they want to start bring it up the mountain to Camp 3 or 4???
Am curious about Lobuje. Was it the excrement-laced dump that Krakauer described in his book?
Some do die because they slipped and fell. Some die in the icefall from the falling seracs, but up high some do slip and fall. And die.
In Into Thin Air, Fischer’s and Hall’s parties summitted on 10 May 1996. The day before, one climber from the Taiwanese climbing party slipped at Camp Three and fell to his death - he went outside his tent to go to the bathroom wearing only the liners of his boots, not any boots or crampons. Major mistake, and it cost him his life.
At the South Col, if the weather is bad one can get disoriented and walk off the north side and slide down the Kangshung Face. And if they did they would most likely die.
When I was there years ago, it was not that bad. However, I was there in the middle of winter so there was only a handful of people there. The great thing about the place was the amount of canned food available. The large trekking groups just dump their supplies there on their way down from the mountain. Rice and lentils were pretty much all there was to eat before I got to Lobuche. One of my most memorable meals ever was a can of pork and beans I had the pleasure of eating there. Dal Bhat for breakfast, lunch and dinner gets old fast.
During the trekking season I’m sure it gets to be a zoo. At 16,200’ there is not too much decomposition going on so the excrement just starts piling up.
Piles of shit, literally. Great. I want to hike to EBC one day. Am looking forward to it.
I’m glad you have good memories of Lobuche.