Excelent.
All the accounts I’m seeing report 4 dead. Not the total of 7 that the OP was claiming, the initial 5 in the opening post and the 2 added later.
I assume 4 is the accurate number?
I have to admit, ralph, it’s as good as any idea you’ve ever had.
For anyone of you interested in Everest, there was a show called
Everest: Beyond the limit
That went for 3 seasons. Each season follows a group expedition from base camp to the 2 week acclimation to the summit attempt. It’s given me all I need to know about what it takes make a summit attempt and satisfied all desire to actually go – having seen it through the eyes of those yahoos.
I found it pretty riveting. May be worth a watch.
“According to Wikipedia”, six fatalities on 19-20 May:
And 10 so far this year! :eek:
Of course, not all were summitting. But still… 
Not this guy, though: http://news.yahoo.com/everest-climber-skips-summit-rescues-friend-094833720.html
I heard (no cite) that the American guy wanted to bring his bicycle to the summit!
Does this make any sense.
Lucky for him, his Israeli friend rescued him.
Frankly, the desire to climb Everest is just so last year!
Great article on the worlds most dangerous climbs. Everest is not #1. Annapurna in Nepal has a fatality rate of 41%.
Hundreds of climbers jam the ascent through the Death Zone on Everest:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7409544n
They look like 49ers climbing Chilkoot Pass into the Yukon during the gold rush. Two hundred are scheduled to make the final ascent today.
I caught some of those episodes awhile back too. It was interesting to see the “smart” people as well as the “dumb” people and how they thought, planed and reacted. You could almost tell the “this guy will probably be okay if he doesn’t get unlucky” from the “I hope this guy IS lucky because thats all thats gonna keep his ass alive”.
Like you said…worth watching if Everest interests you.
Gawd, hundreds making a run for the Peak!? Can you imagine if the shit hit the fan with that many people up there? It would make that “into thin air” fiasco years ago look pleasant by comparision.
One weird quote from one of your links:
I’d never heard of this phenomena before. Why would latitude have anything to do with pO2 levels at a given altitude? Did the article writers pull this out of thin air, or is there something to it?
Or, I could just google a little harder for the answer:
Here’s a Journal of Applied Physiology article on the same subject, showing model atmospheres for different latitudes and seasons.
Huh, learn something new everyday.
Responding to this, and to similar posts: I’ve got no problem with the Nepali government soaking rich foreigners. The Nepali people are rat-poor, and money that goes to the government can help Nepalis in areas that are not touristy, and do not receive many tourism dollars (or yen, or euros). But I don’t think that raising the price for a climb permit will do much to help. It’s already expensive to climb the mountain, from the cost of the flight to the hiring of Sherpas, and that’s not deterring many people. But more importantly, I don’t think that the size of potential climbers’ pocketbooks is a good way to sort out the actual skilled and talented climbers from the rich idiots. Indeed, charging more to climb the mountain might actually cause more deaths as the only people who can afford to climb are rich idiots, while the experienced people who can actually climb well with less risk are priced out. I’m not certain that increasing the price tag is a good way to address the real problem: idiots.
Now a Canadian family is the government to help pay for the body retrieval expenses.
From that article:
"Shah-Klorfine had already spent more than $100,000 and mortgaged her home in order to finance the expedition. Her family is now trying to raise funds to cover the cost of bringing her body to Camp 2.
“We want somebody to help us in the foreign affairs department to bring the body from Kathmandu to Toronto,”"
It sounds like this person was on the financial edge of being able to go in the first place. A higher fee would have saved her life.
Sounds like a win-win to me. 
Should of bought trip insurance.
Interesting how her family tried to appeal the Canadian governments sense of patriotism by saying that her sole purpose of the climb was to unfurl the Maple Leaf on top of Everest. I doubt if that was her sole purpose.
Again, so bizarre…if some rich guy spend 6 months in Haiti, helping poor people, nobody would notice.
But he/she blows $100,000 on climbing a mountain, and everybody applauds-weird.
I wonder if a major disaster (say 30+ people dying0 might be enough to stop this nonsense.
Well, the family could always dress her up as skunk and put her on ebay as a “stone cold furby”. That should net some cold hard cash.