Pretty much all of them are using supplemental oxygen.
And they’ve instituted a lottery/timed entry system for AL now. They really need to implement something similar to that on Everest, but Nepal isn’t motivated to do so.
I did it many years ago but at hat time there was almost no one on it.
We stayed in the park, walked to the trailhead before dawn and headed up by headlamp. We were the only people up there.
Does it have a long line now?
I went up in about 1990. Went right up, no problem. I’m glad I did, but I guess I never will again.
There were so few people I got a picture of my friend at the bottom of Walter’s Wiggles, taken from the top, and there’s no one else in the picture.
I don’t know what it is like now that they have a permit system. It looks like they are limiting it to around 800 hikers per day so it’s probably still a shit-show if you get there from 9:00AM on. Get there early.
ETA: Hah! I realize now you’re talking about Angels Landing. I’ll keep the post below about Everest, but ignore anything responding to your comment.
Say what? There are a total of 400-500 permits for the entire year. Add in Sherpa guides and that number goes up, but they don’t all attempt on the same day. The permit is for the season, not for a particular day. The expeditions try to work out different days for each team’s summit attempt, but it’s a polite agreement, not a rule, and that system can get messed up when weather prevents a team from going on their “assigned” day.
The picture above from 2019 was an exceptionally bad day, which happened when bad weather closed the summit window to only a few days. It’s a definite problem that needs better solutions, but it’s not like that picture all the time.
I think I’ve posted this here before but what the hey…
My friend and I had just come down from AL trail and were catching our breaths and waiting out our bambi-legs, chatting with a female ranger at the trailhead. When an old guy ambles over and ask her, “What’s this trail rated”. She pointed at the trailhead sign (where it was clearly written) and simply said, “Strenuous”.
He considers her response for a moment and then said, "I meant for a man?’ She didn’t change expressions and just repeated, “Strenuous”.
He then asked, “What about for a German man?”, to which she again, calmly, said, “Strenuous”.
True story, he was dead serious. Had I been her I would have been sorely tempted to tell him ‘oh well, then… piece of cake’.
I think there are quite a few who are visible, in “rainbow valley,” but not many remain on the path or very close to the path. The ones who are that close have tended to get sort of landmark status. In recent years, it seems like expeditions have moved the bodies that were very close.
A landmark since the Everest disaster of 1996, “Green Boots,” on the North side, marked 8500m elevation. He was moved in 2014 to a less conspicuous location by a Chinese expedition. Moving his body may have been connected with the death of David Sharp, who took shelter near Green Boots when he became severely hypothermic, and dozens of people passed by without helping him. Some have suggested that they may have mistaken him for Green Boots.
There have been a few more, like Sleeping Beauty, who died still clipped into the safety rope. I believe someone performed a ceremony, and then pushed her body down a slope, again to move her to a less conspicuous resting place.
Correction: He was thought to have been moved, because he was no longer visible in 2014. But the body had just been buried with rocks and snow. The body became visible again in 2017.
Bodies that have been dead at least several days are dessicated, but bodies dead less than two weeks would have a lot of frozen water content. In my reading of the matter that was the result of some bodies: shattered like an ice cube. But I don’t recall the cite nor do I have it.
Do you have time to edit?
Done. Thanks!
Sure, temps are cold up there but not appreciably colder than a commercial freezer. Frozen sides of beef don’t shatter, there’s no reason that a human body would.
Fair enough. I wonder where I read that?
They’re known by their sobriquets, but since they’ve been identified, perhaps it’s more respectful to refer to Green Boots and Sleeping Beauty by their names (Tsewang Paljor and Francys Arsentiev, respectively)?
I have no opinion about this and certainly no dog in this fight but if a slab of beef falls from a meat hook in a freezer, it’s barely moving and it’s a drop of only a foot or two. A frozen body falling from Everest could potentially fall several hundred feet and be moving at quite a clip.
Not saying I think they would explode but there is a difference between the two.
Well they are also covered in safety gear and thick winter clothing…