Here’s a sweet link.
So the “first man to summit with no legs” has to be dragged back down on his arse, does his ridiculous record still count?
Wait a sec, did they just say he lost his legs to frostbite trying to climb this mountain before, and now his stumps are frostbitten??? :mad:
That he did.
One question – was the dying guy both Max and Pumba trying to save David Sharp? I was waiting to see if they’d mention the ID at the end of the show, but I don’t recall hearing anything.
I’ve had mixed opinions about Everest ever since Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air was published. Obviously there’s a racket going on with the outfitters; said outfitters seem to take almost anybody as long as there’s an ability to pay. The camps are nasty and the mountainside’s littered with empty oxygen bottles, trash, and bodies.
That’s not to say that I don’t admire their determination and stamina because I do. Are they foolish? I suppose, especially for those whose conditions would ordinarily rule out a simple climb, never mind Everest. But overcoming the setbacks one would have with such a condition (think Mogens or Mark) and accomplishing as much as they could/did, says a lot, especially Mark.
Mountain climbing isn’t for everyone. It takes a particular type of person who is, in part a Type A, but also possesses something else. I’m just not sure what that “something else” is.
Sorry, missed most of the fianle: Does anybody know why sharpe was abandoned on the mountain? did his party just leave him? Or was he one of those egomaniacs who ignored the team leader’s advice to come down? Like i said, i can understand the attraction of being the FIRST man to summit Everest, and maybe, the 10th man-but the 5000’th man?? Question: will most health insurance plans pay for self-inflicted injuries (like having your rotten, black, frostbitten toes amputated?
And another question for serious climbers-why all the frostbite? Sir John Humt’s 1954 expedition had very few cases of it-why can’t the modern expeditions match this record?
Sharpe wasn’t with a team AFAIK. He was with an expedition, Asian Trekking Logistics, but I think the climbers in the expedition were all solo. Sharp had no sherpas climbing with him.
And kiz, yes, that was Sharp that the climber and the sherpa stopped to help on the Discovery Channel show.
I believe it was Sharp who was filmed but never named. Max tried in vain to help him, but Sharp was too far gone. At that height, you simply cannot carry a man down. If he was unable to come down on his own, he was toast. Max kept trying to prod him along, but he was unresponsive. Max’s team back at camp kept ordering him via radio to leave Sharp (“He can’t be helped. It’s sad, but there’s nothing you can do for him.”) and descend immediately. Max, obviously horrifically conflicted and weeping, stayed much longer than was safe and finally left.
Later, a Sherpa team went and moved Sharp’s body off the path.
What the show did not cover was the fact that another dude, thought to be dead as well, walked into camp the next day, frostbitten but alive. For the life of me, I cannot recall that chap’s name.
Oh, and can we all just put in our “Everest Manual” that we do NOT take off our freaking gloves at minus 20 to take a picture, especially when everyone else is telling you to haul your ass down the mountain before you DIE??
Poor sherpas. Can you imagine a job where you pass frozen corpses with their hair blowing in the wind? Holy crap.
Watching the show is fascinating and immensely aggravating at the same time.
P.S. How much does one tip a sherpa? What about one who hauled your legless body down the freaking mountain? I hope he got at least a twenty.
That was Lincoln Hall, and it all happened on the other side of the mountain. And he didn’t just walk into camp, he was rescued by the combined efforts of 20 people operating at the edge of their capabilities. He was alert and responsive when they found him after spending a night out at 28,000’, much different then Sharp. If he hadn’t been able to contribute to his own rescue I doubt it would have happened.
http://www.everestnews.com/Summitclimb2005/lincolnhalleverest05302006.htm
It’s still an amazing rescue story and does make you question that if conditions were perfect and you had a dozen fresh Sherpas handy that Sharp might have been rescued. But he did elect to go essentially without support and new the risks.
What the expedition leader said was this: At around 28,500 feet–and on the northern route, no less–it would take 15+ men to haul down your average near-unconscious bloke.
The problems with this textbook rescue are several: (a) rustling up 15 strong (rather than enervated) and experienced climbers–all at once and quickly enough–just isn’t possible; (b) the route up and down the northern ridge is notoriously steep and often just one-boot wide. (c) It’s more likely that a would-be rescuer would slip off the path and pull several would-be rescuers (all wearing sharp crampons) down on top of him (d) the incapacitated climber was unusually large, meaning perhaps 20 men would be needed (e) the incapacitated climber was almost certainly already suffering from acute cerebral edema, meaning brain damage was already likely; and (f) going to superhuman efforts to save a nearly dead climber only sets a dangerous precedent for future climbers, who will go beyond their limits believing that a similar superhuman effort will be waged to save their sorry keister.
The dying climber made several bad decisions. Leaving him to die was the humane thing to do.
Because you have lots of people who shouldn’t be up there, taking way too long in the death zone without the knowledge of what they should be doing, pushing way too hard to achieve a goal without considering the consequences. When people think this is their one and only shot, they do stupid things.
But good gear can really help things. Beck Weathers, despite all his other problems, didn’t lose any toes because the boots today are so much better then they were 50 years ago. I don’t know if people in this program lost any toes, but I know they lost some fingers. Glove technology hasn’t advanced as far.
It also could be as simple as that Hillary & Co. were sucking more O’s than today’s teams, but more likely it was a mix of ego and other factors.
The Brit climbers put the team ahead of the individual and was quite conservative. Today’s pay-for-summit teams exalt the individual and push the envelope to the breaking point. But remember: Hunt’s team were climbing the comparatively easy southeastern route. The Discovery team was scaling the north side. Much harder. Much.
A lot of posters here are pooh-pooing the Discovery climbers, but my guess is that most of them could have kept us with many Hunt’s teams. Remember, the Discovery team (and most other western) teams today are composed of largely exceptional distance athletes. Sure, their climbing resumes may be thin, but all have climbed a couple of lesser 8000-meter peaks, and summited Denali/Rainier/Elbert/etc. before the big push on Everest. Put any of the Discovery team against most any person on the SDMB and they would blow us away on the cardiovascular-aerobic-lactic-acid threshold front. They aren’t the stumblebum, hapless fools the media wants us to believe, although they aren’t finessed high-altitude climbers either.
That said, today’s teams have far superior technology, from super-warm double boots to ultra-lite oxygen cannisters to fixed ropes and more. Had Mallory had this back in the mid-1920s, Hillary would be an unknown.
Let me correct for my many typos. That should read:
It also could be as simple as that Hillary & Co. were sucking more O’s than today’s teams, but more likely it was a mix of ego and other factors. 
Hunt’s men put the team ahead of the individual and were quite conservative. Today’s pay-for-summit teams exalt the individual and push the envelope to the breaking point. But remember: Hunt’s team were climbing the comparatively easy southeastern route. The Discovery team was scaling the north side. Much harder. Much.
A lot of posters here are pooh-pooing the Discovery climbers, but my guess is that most of them could have kept pace with many on Hunt’s teams. Remember, the Discovery team (and most other western teams) today are composed of largely exceptional distance athletes. Sure, their climbing resumes may be thin, but all have climbed a couple of lesser 8000-meter peaks, and summited Denali/Rainier/Elbert/etc. before the big push on Everest. Hillary couldn’t claim that, not even close.
Put any of the Discovery team against most any person on the SDMB and they would blow us away on the cardiovascular-aerobic-lactic-acid threshold front. They aren’t the stumblebum, hapless fools the media wants us to believe, although they aren’t finessed high-altitude climbers either.
That said, today’s teams have far superior technology, from super-warm double boots to ultra-lite oxygen cannisters to fixed ropes and more. Had Mallory had this back in the mid-1920s, Hillary would be an unknown.
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all well and good, but somebody please explain to a non-climber like myself about that clusterfuck mondo-persons back-up on the mountain under some seriously hellish weather conditions that had everybody motionless for HOW long?? and we’ve all learned enough watching this show and reading ‘thin air’ that if you stop you can die. how does this happen? why on earth are that many relatively inexperienced people taken up there like that?
yeah, yeah, i know: the almighty freakin’ buck…
be that as it may, there’s no doubt in my mind that that gridlock contributed greatly to the frostbite numbers doctor terry had to deal with. in fact he commented as much that he’d be busy doing same. one of those climbers lost the tips of his fingers AND his toes, remember?
i don’t get it. i just don’t. 
i do get the fact that if you get too bad physically - you get left behind. that’s just the way it is. they don’t call it the death zone for nothing. its the sheer numbers of people climbing in an already deadly environment like everest that are making it so extraordinarily dangerous for everyone else.
or, educate me. tell me i’m completely off base here - and why.
The mondo-clusterfucks were from another expedition. Brice and his climbers had no authority to make them get out of the way, and the mondo-clusterfucks had no sherpa guides IIRC. Just like a shitty driver on the freeway doing 45, he’s not breaking any laws, I have no authority to make him get out of the way.
OK, help me out here:
I read that there’s no evidence that Mallory/Irvine made it past the “Second Step.” This is not to debate whether or not that is plausible, but online resources on the “Second Step” weren’t very helpful. I get the idea that it’s sorta like a sheer wall, which as since had a ladder attached. Is this close to accurate?
I understand that the Government of Nepal 9which issues the permits to climb Mt. Everest), makes quite a bit of cash off these “expeditions”. Do they care that thousands of foreigners are dumping trash, corpses, used oxygen bottles, etc. over their lovely , sacred mountain? What do the “eco-turists” have to say about this?
Ohnad an unrelated question; do people ever climb Mt. Kailas?
Everest has been a mess for a long time, and will continue to be for a long time to come. Nepal (and China, there are several routes from the Chinese side) could restrict access and enforce cleaner and safer policies, but as has been said, there’s a lot of money to be made there, it’s the center of the economy for an entire region. It’s not just the climbers, but thousands more tourists who go to Namche Bazaar or base camp.
And all the climbers who pay $60K to be guided up the mountain know what they are getting into. It’s not like they are innocent bystanders who are caught in a traffic jam. They are the traffic jam. The biggest mountains in any particular range (Denali, Whitney, Ranier, Washington) all have the same problems, while the second highest in each of those ranges are more interesting and have less then 10% of the traffic.
Having said all that, Everest is somewhat better then it was in the 80’s, with more organization that allows for outhouses and fixed ropes/ladders. better healthcare and infrastructure for the Sherpas, and more attention to cleanup at the South Col and higher camps.
My brother is an accomplished alpinist, with many tough ascents in Asia. Although we no longer speak to each other, from our discussions (and those with other accomplisher climbers–and from my own extensive readings), the Second Step is a roughly 100 vertical wall located at about 28,100 feet. The view looking down is said to be terrifying, for some, because the exposure is extreme.
In the 1970s, the Chinese bolted a longish (maybe 25 foot) aluminum ladder along the crux–the toughest part of the wall–using pitons. In mountaineering terms, this is the equivalent of strapping a jet pack to your back, just before entering the 100-meter freestyle in the Olympics, but that’s the way it is.
I’ve read quite a lot on the 1924 climb, but after weighing the evidence, it’s unlikely Mallory and Irvine scaled the Second Step which, without the ladder, technically rates at about 5.8 to 5.10–and we’re talking high-altitude technical climbing, not bouldering in your backyard. What’s more, no one back then knew which route to take up the Step–left, straight up or to the right. Moreover, these two Brits didn’t have the equipment to rappel down, and downclimbing the Second Step is impossible. In 1934, a Brit climbing team found no evidence of any ropes on the Second Step, strongly suggesting it had never been rapelled down. In addition, many top technical climbers today doubt Mallory had the skills to climb 5.8 at high or low altitude, and no one back then knew the route to the summit, once they got past the Second Step–not without wasting valuable O2.
I’d love to learn they beat Hillary by 29 years, but the facts don’t argue for it at all.
That said, they were tough bastards and chose a much tougher route than Hillary.
Yes, he did lose some toes. In his published account he talks about walking down a hallway during his recovery and having one of his big toes snap clean off.
Gerard, the French climber, lost parts of every finger and toe.
Ingles, the double-amputee, lost an additional inch off both his leg stumps.
On the show they talk about how, although the weather was clear and the wind calm, it was also unusually cold that day, the coldest summiting weather on record. I’m sure that contributed to frostbite.
I finally watched he whole thing; now I am even more puzzled about why people do this. First: Everest must be a very smelly place-600 people camped on the mountain-each one contributing 2-3 lbs of feces/day-ughh!
Second: who the heck allows those large groups of inexpereinced climbers (like the Korean group at the ladder) to climb the mountain?
The issue about the death of Sharp-why is climbing alone allowed?
Like I said, you really have to want to do this-Mogens Jensen (the Danish guy), went back for another attempt-he looked really rough after his failed attempt. Is he rich? How does he afford this? (I think he was a schoolteacher).