I read just yesterday that there are reckoned to be around 250 corpses on Everest. They have been left there because it would take a team of 6-8 experienced climbers/sherpas to even attempt bringing one body down, and that would be dependent on the position of the body and the ease of access.
Personally, I regard attempting to climb Everest as a foolhardy endeavour at best, and at worst it is an exercise in vainglorious narcissim.
More like 100 corpses still on the mountain, out of the over 300 that died.
Note that, as of 2018, over 5200 people have summitted. Starting in 2006, the summit success rate of people who attempt the climb is 64%. The death rate since 2006 is “only” 1%. Not in any way foolhardy, IMO.
I see the attraction, I hear the call of the mountain, but I’ll never go. But it’s not fear of death that keeps me off, it’s that “a man’s got to know his limitations”. I know Everest is past my limitations.
Yes, I agree. Ive loved hiking, climbing, scrambling for a long time. Really have enjoyed reading the books and tales of those who climb and conquer these sorts of mountains. Much respect for the pioneers especially. Hobnail boots and wool sweaters…
Myself? Ive stood on a few peaks before, and the journey up for me was much more satisfying then the summit. Nice view, ok lets do something else.
Everest and other similar “ordeal /situations” have never really appealed to me. One step for every breath of oxygen from a tank? Jeez what could go wrong?
Besides, it’s just not true that climbers put reaching the summit over helping a climber in distress when possible. If you reach the summit of Everest, you’re one of a couple of hundred people each season that does so and it’s probably not a big deal outside of your immediate circle of family and friends. If you stopped short of the summit and successfully rescued another climber, carrying him down, you’d gain a lot of respect and credibility in the climbing community and you’d possibly make the news and gain supporters and sponsorships.
The problem is in the difficulty / impossibility of carrying down a distressed climber….Everest is a technical climb, not a hike. It may not be the most difficult technical climb and there are some assists, like fixed ladders, but do you really think it’s easy to carry someone down a forty foot cliff face?
I’ve read lots of accounts of Everest climbers, and people do stop and try to help distressed climbers. They stop and give them oxygen and water and try to urge them to get up and get on their feet. But they problem is, they frequently resist. They pull away and sit back down. They may try to remove their clothing. They may become delirious and even aggressive, cerebral edema is a danger of high altitudes.
And even if you can get them down to high camp, if they have cerebral or pulmonary edema there are still in serious trouble and will probably die anyway.
I’m not saying the Everest climbing community is noble. There are serious problems with inexperienced climbers and shady operators and things like theft of supplies and people selling counterfeit and defective equipment and oxygen bottles, which are life or death issues on Everest.
But almost every serious climber has been in trouble at some point in their climbing career, and needed the assistance of another climber. If it’s possible for them to safely help another climber, most of them will. It’s just that it’s sometimes not possible.
Surely the hard-core climbers can still test their skills on Annapurna, K2, the Eiger, etc.
We have very, very different risk assessments 
. I’d label it insanely foolhardy. There is no leisure activity worth a 1/100 chance of dying in my own humble opinion. Dying sucks, especially for atheists like me.
By comparison a sky-diving jump has a fatality rate of ~1/167,000. A bungee jump ~1/500,000. A SCUBA dive ~1/1,800,000. And you’ll never catch me doing the first two.
My and a few others’ comments from December '21
In this article, he expresses regret for climbing it.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/18/living/jon-krakauer-everest-feat/index.html
(Edited) Sorry didn’t mean to hijack this thread. I should start a new thread elsewhere.
I agree with your main point. “Only” a 1% fatality rate is pretty damn scary.
But I think your scuba numbers are off. I found a cite that noted the death rate is 1/200,000, which seems more likely. Between 2010 and 2106, there were over a thousand fatalities in diving. The percentage is lower, because a lot more people scuba than climb Everest, but the total deaths are greater.
Still, I’m not going to dive, scuba or sky, ever.
In case I ever start thinking about skydiving, I have a newspaper article from long ago, where a family gave the husband a skydive gift for his birthday. He died right in front of them. Nope, not for me.
It’s been mentioned before, but also keep in mind the 1% fatality rate is misleading. That’s comparing deaths to successful summits, but the more accurate measure would be deaths to attempts, or even just being on the mountain. Some of the deaths were sherpas setting lines or on supply runs who were not even making an attempt on the summit.
It’s still a ridiculously dangerous endeavor.
Honestly, the pictures and descriptions of Everest - the bodies, the poop, the trash - make it look very unappealing. If I were a climber looking to test myself, I’d go for one of the others you’ve mentioned.
I don’t know a lot about the others (except for The Eiger Sanction!) but K2 is very hard and much more dangerous. Far fewer people have summitted, and Quoth the wiki:
As of February 2021, 377 people have completed a summit of the mountain, while 91 have died trying, a staggering 4:1 ratio.
Everest is a just a hike in comparison. K2 is a serious climb - near vertical faces, traverses of an ice shelf, not to mention winds and blinding snow. Heck, a guy got killed on the flat glacier that surrounds the mountain, without even starting the true ascent, from a falling rock.
Annapurna’s similarly dangerous to K2. 365 summits vs 72 deaths, according to Wikipedia. Note however that deaths vs summits doesn’t quite tell you the danger level, as it omits the climbers who fail to summit but survive. The 8000m peaks are all bloody dangerous. Cho Oyu, the least dangerous, easiest to climb, and after Everest the most popular, still has 44 deaths to 3k summits as of 2012.
Yes, I know that the other big mountains are as dangerous. But if I were the type to risk my life to climb a mountain, I’d prefer to tackle one that’s a little more pristine than Everest. I wouldn’t want my last sight to be poop and corpses.
Just make sue you don’t climb the Eiger with Jonathan Hemlock. Chances of survival are slim.
I’ve been following the full circle team and a climber alldayeddie on IG. They summited in the dark so no great view but one awesome sunrise on the way down!
This story mentions an 11-year-old who said he wanted to climb Everest. Yeah, I wanted to do that when I was 11, but unlike him, I would have had no idea what I was getting into, because, well, I was 11. Was it the kid’s idea in the first place to do this?
Stories like that remind me of the early 1990s craze of younger and younger children flying airplanes across the U.S. I predicted that it would end when a child-piloted plane crashed, and it would kill everyone on board and possibly people on the ground. And I was half right.
Wow. That’s like kissing your sister…
I’ll omit the joke I would normally put here
Hell, if you really wanna go for the glory, then give Gangkhar Puensum a go.
And he’s already had a lot of success, it seems:
Krakauer offered up the admission in response to 11-year-old Tyler Armstrong, who said he is hoping to climb the tallest peaks on each continent – he’s so far done three – and asked for advice on climbing Everest.
It’s been awhile since I read the novel and I may mix it up with the film or something else I read but they have traffic jams up there. Everybody and his brother wants to climb it, which created other problems.
At Camp 2, two levels higher than base camp, the campaigners believe that around 8,000kg (17,637lbs) of human excrement were left during this year’s climbing season alone.