The best way to prevent deaths on Everest is to outlaw climbing on Everest. Period.
But then only outlaws will climb Everest. 
Nepal is literally one of the poorest countries on Earth. I imagine they are more concerned with things like high maternal mortality among their own citizens, childhood malnutrition, keeping their new and tenuous peace in place, etc. When your own people are dying off in droves from preventable causes, a handful of foreigners getting themselves in trouble is not really a top priority.
And it is, of course, their own damn mountain. If they want to charge $60,000 to climb it and they can find takers, that’s their right. Considering that to get a “foreign investment visa” to the US will cost you half a million dollars, I have a hard time getting worked up about high fees. Your random Nepalese guy has basically zero chance of ever being permitted to come to America. Why shouldn’t they be free to get what we are willing to pay out of us?
You need some death now and then. It’s good for business.
Frankly, the climbing pass should be much, much more expensive. Make it $100k (and that’s just the pass to climb paid to the government) and I guarantee you that rich idiots will continue to pay it.
I wonder how satifying it can possibly be, to stand in a line of 150 people, or clamber past the numerous frozen, dessicated corpses that litter the trail to get the top.
Surrounded by the scenic beauty of about 50+ tons of trash.
Some pretty creepy pics.
This is funny, but it is kind of true.
I have a friend (I haven’t seen much of him over the past couple of years) who is an accomplished mountaineer, (he’s climbed 3 of the 7 Continental Summits) who has long held that Everest was mostly an ego trip for climbers, and that anyone who has the skills to climb Denali or the Matterhorn can certainly climb Everest, if they have the $$$ to make the trip happen.
For a long time I thought this was a bit of “sour grapes” on his part, but after reading a bit about Everest, it seems that he may have a point, in that it is NOT the most technically challenging mountain on Earth to climb, but it is the most expensive, and in some ways prestigious, to be able to have topped.
The “technical difficulty” in climbing Mt. Everest is that the air is too thin up there. If the mountain had the exact same terrain but half the altitude it wouldn’t be considered such a prize, it would be less dangerous, and there would be a hell of a lot less dead bodies and trash up there.
A friend of mine has done the 7 Summits, and according to her this is not true. While the mountaineering skills for Everest aren’t that demanding, the ability to deal with altitude and to suffer like you’ve never suffered before is the dividing line. High altitude mountaineering isn’t simply a matter of climbing skills and drive. If your body can’t handle the altitude, no amount of will is going to get you up. Some of it is luck of the draw; but if your body can take it then the climb becomes a matter of mental toughness. You need both to succeed, and even then if the weather conspires against you then you will fail.
I personally don’t feel the draw, but I can understand it.
Works for me.
Well, I would make it more like $250K. Might as well have it an amount that can really kick into the government’s coffers. I see no problem with the government using rich idiots to fund the country.
I wonder if there would be a ‘market’ for a business based on making rescues - a seriously beefed up helicopter and crew trained specifically for rescues. Starting fee $500K per person or something. Bet the cost of living there is fairly inexpensive so even figuring on a heavy financial cost to run the helo and crew it you could still make a profit. I suppose that some insurance company could rake in a fortune selling helo rescue insurance to pick up the cost.
Yup, pretty thought provoking. Seeing the bodies left on the side of a mountain would dissuade me from climbing, to be perfectly honest.
Other than where [I guess] animals have consumed them, they seem to be in reasonably good condition.
For those who don’t want to read the article, there’s an interesting tidbit in there. The Nepalese consider Mt. Everest sacred and have a policy of removing bodies that are found on the mountain. This is another expense that the government incurs, and it’s no doubt risky for those charged with clean-up duty.
I dont get this thread. Why is it the Nepalese governments responsibility to cater to these people?
They choose this. That doesnt mean Nepal has to protect them
Look up some of the OP’s thousands (literally) of other threads on this message board. Your threshold for badly-thought-out questions and simplistic solutions will be seriously challenged.
Nah, no animals up there. (There is, I believe, a particular spider that’s the highest-dwelling animal. It eats stuff the wind brings it.)
In a way, mountaineering a la Everest is very ethical in terms of risk.
First, people place themselves at risk, and can expect minimal quarter when that risk unfolds.
Second, the risks and corresponding mitigators are well known; it takes Volitional Stoopid in order to force the risk.
Third, unless people choose freely to hazard themselves in rescue or recovery, people are not otherwise obligated to mitigate somebody else’s stoopid.
Fourth, the high risk activity imparts hard currency to a poor nation’s coffers.
Helicopters don’t fly at those altitudes. You can’t “beef them up”. Flying a helicopter that can do an evacuation from the base camp is a dangerous maneuver. A helicopter that can do an evacuation from the “Death Zone” is a helicopter (a pilot, a rescue worker and the ability to lift an additional 150+pounds) that has yet to be invented. It’s like saying “drive a really good ambulance to the Amazon River to save the guy that is being eaten by a crocodile.” When the accident happens the person is probably dead within minutes anyway.
It’s my understanding that global temperature change has exposed bodies that were just part of the glaciers a few years ago. Now people are seeing the effects of temperature change while seeing visual evidence of the dangers of Everest. I think that if I was scaling Everest (which I have no desire to do) and saw a frozen, dead body where the ice had melted away, I think I would turn around and get back to the real world.
One helo pilot did evac 2 climbers, but from 16K feet. He also landed on the summit. Still, it’s really fucking dangerous, and you risk adding a flaming mass of wreckage to the problem.
My big issue with the government permits is not their cost, but that simply too many are issued. This creates sizeable delays on summit attempts, and the overcrowding has led to severe injuries and deaths.
It’s a very limited window to make a summit bid due to the weather, and when people are fighting other expeditions who often have unprepared and undertrained climbers, it’s hazardous for everyone – on top of the natural dangers.
I understand Nepal needs the money, but hell, increase the fee and reduce the number of climbers and that’d help save people. People would still die, but they wouldn’t die because of wholly preventable traffic jams at the summit.
Yes, and the Nepal base camp is at 17,600 ft. I thought there had been a evacuation from there but I might be wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everest_Base_Camp
Everest is 29,000 feet. So somebody got a helicopter up there. It certainly wasn’t a rescue helicopter. It would be like asking an Olympic high jumper to clear a 7’ bar with a disabled person on his back.