I met him a few times when I worked in Cambridge. He was friends with our CEO so he had an office in our building, and I had several chats with him in the hallways. He was charming and very nice.
I never met him but he was very generous in the time of the Into Thin Air disaster, donating many resources of his own project and climb of Everest for the rescue. He was at base camp that day and able to talk with both climbing parties, Rob Hall’s and Scott Fischer’s.
- Much too young to die.
This should be a gift link to the Boston Globe article.
“Mr. Breashears, who summited Mount Everest five times, was the co-director and cinematographer of “Everest,” one of the most viewed IMAX documentaries in history.”
Two months younger than me. 
I didn’t realize we were that close in age when I met him. I just assumed that, being so accomplished, he had to be older.
RIP. I met him at the IMAX premiere in San Diego, where he gave a talk and hosted a slideshow of photos from his career and the Everest expeditions. Really nice guy. My girlfriend was so impressed it triggered sort of a mini-obsession with mountaineering.
Climbers are in route to Everest Base Camp and should be arriving in the next week. A couple of interesting links:
Overview of the start of the trip, from Kathmandu to Lukla:
Weekly update:
100 years after his attempt to scale everest …
Letters here.
In my experience almost no one ever “takes” a shit. I always leave mine.
Well, that was the joke…
“Where’d you leave it this time? Last time the kids didn’t find it until Easter!”
- George Carlin
Probably good to check your insurance prior to the climb.
I’m hoping his epitaph reads “Suck It, Pheidippides”.
The first summiteers have reached the top in the last couple days, with more scheduled to attempt it today and tomorrow. Weather has been really good so far with a favorable outlook for the rest of May, which hopefully will allow teams to spread out more and reduce some of the dangerous conditions caused by overcrowding.
There was one death so far on a different peak, Makalu, by a Sherpa who reported not feeling well on the descent.
No matter how stupid one may think climbing Everest and dying is, running 200 miles and dying just to report the news is stupider.
If you read the article, there was a lot more to the story than that.
He was paid well (for the time and the region) to be a mail runner, and he was good at it.
It seems likely that he contracted a lowland (which Kathmandu is compared to Everest) illness that turned out to be fatal, not that the run killed him. There is also a phenomenon that the article alludes to called high-altitude de-acclimatization syndrome (HADAS) which can occur when someone who lives at altitude descends too quickly. It’s not life-threatening, but it may have exacerbated the situation.
Pheidippides reportedly ran over 300 miles. He ran from Athens to Sparta, about 150 miles, tried and failed to get the Spartans to send troops to help Athens (they were busy having a festival), then ran back, fought in the battle, then ran the relatively short distance of 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to report their victory. So goes the story, at least.
Yeah, mail running was a pretty vital part of communication in colonial India (and of course in pre-colonial times as well). Immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in “The Overland Mail”:
This seems concerning:
The season’s first death on Everest is confirmed.