Wipe it off and say you’re sorry.
On Everest, when you can no longer stand up and walk - that’s when you’re doomed.
If you go down and, at some point, get back up (like Beck Weathers) maybe you live. But if you don’t stand up, you don’t live.
Reviving someone who is unconcious from hypothermia and/or lack of oxygen can be very difficult even in a modern and well-equipped hospital. Lot’s can go wrong as you warm someone up - heart arrythmias, circulatory problems, organ malfunction…
You are ignoring that, while at certain point on the mountain a rescue is possible, above Camp 4 it is not. It is not because you are, essentially, walking along the equivalent of the peak of a steep roof. There is no flat ground. In many spots people must travel single file in just one direction. In spots they do NOT rope together because there is no point - if a climber falls there is no way for anyone roped to him/her to self-arrest and stop the fall. In those spots if you fall you die. You can’t perform CPR on someone because you need a flat, level surface to do that and there isn’t any. You can’t use a gamok bag because you need flat, level ground for that and there isn’t any. All you can do is administer O2, fluids by mouth, and encouragement. If that doesn’t get a climber on his/her feet, they die. No one, not even a Sherpa, is capable of carrying an adult human unless you’re talking about a very small adult, and even then very, very few could manage it for more than a few feet. Balanced on a knife edge. In snow. On ice. No helicopter for rescue can reach the top of Everest (and the one claim of reaching the top is now somewhat disupted). There’s no room to land airplane. Everything on the top of Everest has been carried there by humans being or shit out the hind end of a migrating goose.
Lower down, yes, people will haul you to your feet, spend time with you, and so on. Heck, there’s even advanced emergency care available lower down during some seasons (such as Ken Kamler in '96). Problem is, you can’t set up an emergency clinic up above Camp 3. In fact, in '96 Kamler was at Camp 4 when all hell broke loose and made the decision that everyone would have to be moved down to Camp 3 because Camp 4 is, apparently, without level ground - what flat there is, is on a 30 degree slope. This doctor - an experienced mountaineer and explorer, as well as a highly skilled surgeon and a exepedition doctor also experienced in providing serious care in remote setting (he once performed reconstructive surgery in the Amazon jungle by flashlight, successfully reconnecting muscles, tendons, and nerves severed by a machete) made the determination that he could not treat Weathers and Makalu at Camp 4. (Again, see Surviving the Extremes where he gives his version of what happened in '96)
If you climb Everest you get into a situation where there can be no Plan B. It’s rather like base-jumping in that respect. Base-jumpers don’t carry a reserve parachute. There’s no point - if you’re first one doesn’t open or malfunctions you won’t have time to deploy another. You’ll hit the ground first, there is no rescue. Likewise, above a certain point on Everest you either walk on your own or you die.
From a physical standpoint, he wasn’t really notable in any way, except he had a broad chest. I later read his lung capacity is about twice the average person’s.
Another guy that was really impressive was the late Alex Lowe, perhaps the best climber of his generation. I remember my half-brother telling me that Alex’s workouts included 400 chinups. Died in China.
Whoops.
Re: Ed Viesturs, one more memory. I saw a NOVA documentary of Viesturs and a team that performed cognitive tests on the summit of Everest. They actually did pretty well.
The documentary noted that Ed’s brain had actually shrunk after a recent Everest climb and the scientists opined on his long-term prognosis. Ed later told us he wasn’t worried and said it would essentially rebound. I also noticed his skin looked pretty weathered. Lots of UV and cosmic rays, I suppose.
One notable factoid is that filmmaker David Breashers said he pulse was only about 90 BPM, while climbing with gear, near the summit. I do 90 climbing a couple flights of stairs!
I didn’t believe you there, but sure enough there are geese that migrate over Everest.
http://magazine.audubon.org/birds/birds0011.html
This debate has revolved around rescue as the sole motive for stopping. Rendering aid is not just a rescue attempt.
Over the 4 pages of debate I have accrued a better understanding of the conditions. I cannot conceive of -100 degree weather but I also have never worn gear that would allow for it. On the flip side of the debate, I have not received a better understanding of human nature or the desire to succeed at a meaningless task. What little respect I had for people who attempt this is now gone. You might as well attempt to set the world record for hitting your head with a hammer. I’ll be equally impressed.
What is the relative elevation for climbers breathing O2 at high elevations?
Is it like breathing at 10,000 feet? 15,000 feet?
The O2 they’re breathing up there isn’t under pressure, so you can’t speak of “relative” altitude. At that point, it’s not just a matter of how much oxygen there is, but that it’s at a low presure, about one third the air pressure experienced at sea level. With the pressure so low the lungs don’t work as efficiently at gas exchange. The body has problems swapping out C02 for O2, even when inhaling 100% O2.
I don’t fully understand how all of it works, or doesn’t work, so I won’t try to explain futher.
Now you’ve got me intrigued - what, for you, determines whether or not a task is “meaningful”?
Gotcha. I was trying to compare it to SCUBA where you inhale pressureized air.
Could someone give an explanation why they don’t use pressurized air? Or perhaps a mix of pressurized oxygen and helium?
It would seem that it would address a lot of the problems of ultra-high altitude climbing.
TIA.
Regards,
Shodan
Climbers carry pressurized oxygen, not air, because they want the biggest pulmonary bang for the buck, or kilogram. The problem is one of weight. Bottled O2 is heavy. (My half-brother showed me a tank from the 1930s compared to a modern Russian oxygen tank. The difference in weight (and sophistication) is astonishing, but today’s tanks are still kinda heavy, especially at altitude, he said.) Basically, climbers are breathing in a relative trickle of oxygen, about 2 to 4 liters per minute, which is a tiny fraction of what they need, given their cardiovascular exertion. The remainder is drawn from the atmosphere, where the oxygen is about one-third the levels at sea level.
Does that answer your question?
I read an interview with Beck Weathers, and they asked him what he’d do if his kids wanted to climb Everest.
He said, in short, that it takes more than being your dream to make something worthwhile. Dreams and challenges don’t have inherent worth.
All actions make the world better, make it worse, or make it stay pretty much the same. Climbing Everest, at this point when hundreds of climbers make it up each year- is one of those pretty much the same actions. Thats a lot of time, money and energy spent for something that doesn’t make the world better.
I climb mountains all the time that 100’s of people have climb every year. It takes a lot of time and effort, and with gas prices today, a lot of money. It’s also risky, as people die in these mountains every year. I don’t really think that my hikes make the world a better place, but I’d fight tooth and nail for the right to do so.
People do lots of things for lots of reasons, not everything needs to be done for the good of the world.
I would imagine the money spent by each climber who goes to Everest must make the world better for some of the people living there. That is a significant cash influx to a relatively poor area.
Well yeah, of course you can do whatever you want.
If you want to never get a decent job and work at McDonald’s all your life, as long as you can pay your bills that is your right. Doesn’t mean I think thats a worthwhile thing to do or respect you for doing it (though I may respect you for other reasons). Call me a dreamer, but I think we should strive to make the world a better place.
Yes, though that comes with it’s own ethical dimensions. Sherpas arn’t superhuman- they have an easier time adapting, but most of them still require O2 and many of them die each year. Is it a good thing to offer and improvished person a chance to make an obcene amount of money (though, still 1/10th of what white expidition leaders make) at the 1 in 20 risk of his life? Would it be ethical for me to offer a bunch of single moms from the inner city 10K to do high risk base jumping as entertainment for a party I’m throwing? Before we came, Everest was sacred ground and the sherpas didn’t venture up there. Now it’s littered with corpses (which they are deeply religiously concerned about) and mother have to send their son’s up there if they hope to have a life. Ethical? Good question.
Then there is the dimension that a lot of the costs are climbing permits, which provide a signifigant income to the rather autocratic King of Nepal. There is a civil war there right now, and the opposing side arn’t nice guy’s either, but the king has a habit of suspending democracy and climbing permits buy the guns that allow him to do so. He’s also not much a friend to Sherpa’s and their culture- he believes in the “Nepalification” of Nepal and ethnic/cultural minorities are encouraged to give up their languages, religions and culture in order to join the India-aligned Hindu-fundamentalist culture of the cities. Additionally, the sheer amount of money flowing directly in to government coffers encourages the government to overlook environmental, cultural and economic consequences of climbing Everest.
I do lots of things to make the world a better place. I also recreate by climbing mountains and backcountry skiing. I don’t think there’s any conflict between the two.
There are more levels than the king and the sherpas. One of the shows I saw had the teams buying their supplies there. These shop owners aren’t the king or sherpas, yet they are getting the business. Without Everest expeditions, they’d be what, goat hearders? Maybe that’s a noble profession and in tune with the earth or something. I’d like to hear how they view their lifestyle in comparison to their agrarian counterparts.
I don’t understand this quote at all. How does it answer the question about what he’d do if his kids wanted to climb Everest?
And climbing Everest NOW makes the world pretty much the same? As opposed to what, when climbing Everest 25 years ago made it … pretty much the same?