[QUOTE=Carnac the Magnificent!]
Human waste is indeed a problem on 8000 meter peaks, but once you’re high into the climb, the good news is that your body essentially shuts down and you start consuming your own fat reserves and muscle tissue. You’re too tired to eat and can’t digest food terribly well anyway, so your bowel movements are far and few in between.
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Here’s a summiter’s words on this process. It’s not a very scientific artcle, but it stresses water intake as one key to reducing the physiological effects of high altitude. It also gives basic definitions of HAPE (High Altitide Pulmonary Edema) and HACE (High Altitude Coronary Edema), two common causes of death on Everest. HAPE is the lungs filling with fluid and HACE is a swelling of the brain. I’m not sure if they are necessarily always fatal. I am hoping my copy of *Into Thin Air * arrives tomorrow for a more detailed explanation. The other articles are pretty interesting too, I’d recommend them. The last set dealing with the climb is the best.
When discussing Oxygen or “Oz” use, the author mentioned it comes out of the bottle very dry and recommends using moisturizing cream to prevent frostnip. I was wondering why Brett Merrell, the LA fire fighter, had a white substance on his face during his climb to camp 2, and think this might be the explanation, unless it’s zinc oxide for the UV rays. I remember him mentoning his Oz use at a relatively low altitude as one reason to eventually turn back, so he would have been on the mask.
[QUOTE=Carnac the Magnificent!]
Best of all, dead climbers are slowly pecked at by high-altitude Himalayan birds, while cosmic radiation bombards bodies into a dessicated shell. In short, nature recycles even in the Death Zone.
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I ran across an Everest victim’s picture and really wish I hadn’t. The body was in a sit-up type position leaning against a rock. Everything from the neck down was proportional to a live climber (the “bulk” was the same and the clothing showed little weathering) but the face and top of the head had been eroded down to the skull. Worst of all, the poor man’s ears and hands were still intact - very bizzare and sad picture.
As far as cleanup and body removal, I recently saw a video of a French helocopter pilot “landing” on the summit. He really could only hover with one skid in the snow to qualify for the record, but a hell of a feat. Obviously the helo was stripped down, but it’s a good sign for potential rescues and cleanup in the future.
I live at sea level and will probably never see anything close to even Base Camp altitudes outside of an airplane, but the Everest show has really sparked my interest in this sport. Like I said, I have one book on the way as well as the Everest IMAX DVD. I have always struggled in cardiovascular sports (no endurance), and hearing about others’ 2-3 hour struggles to go 200-300 FEET is fascinating to me.
From what I’ve read, Everest’s problems far exceed those of the other thirteen 8000+ meter mountains in the world. All mountains have fatalities, but not nearly as many as Everest. While K2, the world’s second-highest peak is a more technical climb, the lure to conquer Everest brings more traffic, more competition amongst expeditions and non-commercial climbers and more deaths due to many factors. For one, climbers spend the longest time in the death zone than at any other peak making oxygen rationing critical (especially when faced with traffic jams). Secondly, we all saw Tim and his French partner get summit fever (not as uncommon as I first thought). One of the contributing factors to the '96 disaster was the culture of guaranteed summits that may have pushed some guides and climbers too far (all six perished on descent). One side of the David Sharp controversy accuses Russell Brice of trying to monopolize the North Face as a money making enterprise (his company takes in $10 million a year). There’s alway two sides to a story, and I’m sure I’ll never get the whole picture, but the more I find out, the more there is to know.
