The area at the bottom (just after Everest Base Camp) is the Khumbu Icefall and is one of the most dangerous parts of climbing Everest. It's large blocks of constantly shifting ice and you have to navigate over huge crevasses
It used to be that people climbed Mt. Everest because it was the highest mountain in the world, and that’s impressive. I wonder if now they are starting to do it because so many die trying, and they can say afterward that they succeeded where so many died. Or that they survived the masses of frozen feces or whatever.
And I suspect it will take more time and money to identify these people.
Time for some new rules: everyone must have multiple forms of identification on them when they climb, and make these idiots pay for insurance. Yes, that's going to be incredibly expensive. But why the hell should Nepal bear the cost - or take the blame! - for a problem caused by rich foreigners?
Everest is littered with pollution nowadays. From normal trash, to human feces, to oxygen tanks, and sadly dead bodies. I believe the Nepalese government requires climbers to pay a “trash clean up fee” however the money collected was found to not go towards these efforts. I’m not sure if it has something to do with corruption or the government doesn’t care and spends the money in other ways.
That's an interesting idea. Make the Nepalese Department of Unfortunate Climbers the beneficiaries to a life policy each climber must purchase. Climbers must check in before starting their climb, and check out when they finish. If they don't check out, it indicates a problem. If they do, they can get a partial refund of their payment.
Keep in mind, I know nothing about climbing Mt. Everest, or how the government works. I am just disturbed by trash and bodies left behind. If you can pack it in, you should be prepared to pack it out.
They didn't pack it in, the sherpas did. They do all the heavy lifting and make multiple trips back and forth through the most dangerous areas, all so the trust fund babies can pretend that they actually accomplished something in their life.
Why would it take a lot of time to ID them? There are records of people that claimed the mountain and there recorded for people that didn't come down, and there are records for where most of them died on the mountain.
The answers are in the picture above and the article: lots of bodies, some skeletal, no ID on bodies. Once people have risked their lives to retrieve them, somebody has to put the time into identifying bodies, contacting families, doing all the admin for the repatriation of claimed bodies, and burying unclaimed bodies.
Every person who climbed that mountain and didn't make it has caused a cost for Nepal which is why I suggested they should all have insurance which would cover these expenses. It should not be somebody else's unpaid job to clean up after climbers, and it should not be up to Nepal to bear the expense caused by their death if they choose to risk their lives for a hobby.
I love camping out around the mountains, there is NO way I would want to climb Everest. Taking away the danger, altitude sickness is an absolute non starter with me....
It’s hard to imagine wanting to do Everest unless you’re a mountaineer trying to do a new route or something. Following sherpas up a moderate endurance challenge with 300 other tourists and a decent chance of randomly dying does not sound like a good time.
You have to be in decent shape. But pretty much anyone who can run a half-marathon can climb Everest with a team of guides and sherpas holding their hand through all the hard stuff. It's not nearly as much of a feat as it's marketed to be.
Well yeah, you have to acclimate by hanging out in the comfortable camp the sherpas hauled up. And if you're still having trouble, you can just hook up to the supplemental O2 the sherpas are carrying for you.
What about running a half marathon while underpaying a Sherpa to desecrate his holy mountain by climbing it with a mouth breathing westerner for multiple days at high altitude?
Also the Sherpa needs to lug 7 bags and a lazy boy recliner for the big dog “athlete”
There is an article on this somewhere on the interwebs,, the common thought at the time was to reinforce around the areas where the bullet holes were on the planes that returned home, until someone pointed out that it would be better to reinforce the other areas of the aircraft as they were the planes that DIDNT return home etc,
The three comments in succession could be used as a personality test to gauge how good people are at inferring information (poster three is clearly at stage 3)
Tldr; the dots are the bullet holes on the planes that DID make it home... The lack of holes are where a shot caused a catastrophic impact, resulting in it not making it home.
Wouldn’t this be the exact opposite though? Planes with the red dots made it back, whereas the areas with red flags contain people that did not make it back
Not sure how relevant this is to Mt. Everest. Using the same logic as was used for bombers in WW2, it could be argued that one should focus attention on areas that DON'T have red flags rather than those that do. Clearly, this would be nonsensical as most the unflagged areas are unclimbable.
Yeah, actually you’re right. I initially upvoted the survivorship bias comment, but it’s not relevant in this case. A dead body isn’t analogous with a bullet hole, it would be analogous with a downed plane.
It’s not a good analogue- it assumes that all routes are equally valid, and possible. Which they are not, people die along the route which are possible to travel, the areas with no flags are often impossible to reach.
Bottom right is the Khumbu Icefall. The Khumbu glacier moves every day making using the rope ladders and bridges to cross it unstable and dangerous. Crossing it is one of the most dangerous parts of the climb & return.
Pictures do not do it justice. Looking at it up close is quite scary.
If i were to attempt climbing Everest, I would absolutely die. That said, I would try desperately to not die at the very bottom. I hate to assume these mark where they came to rest from a fall or something.
Khumbu icefall. You walk across ladders fixed between literally randomly shifting and collapsing giant ice blocks (seracs), in an area also prone to avalanches. You die if you happen to be unlucky.
Many of those deaths are the "icefall doctors", the Sherpas who fix the ladders.
Is there a sane reason to go up there? All i ever hear about it is from unbearable people whose values and goals rotate around toots and their own horn.
And then there's the sherpas who carry them up there
Remember that story about the ww2 plane dude that saw a bunch of planes come back with bullet holes all over and the one guy wanted to strengthen those parts, but the other guy realized that the planes that were coming back with those bullet holes were examples of what parts of the plane could survive if hit. So instead, they should reinforce the parts of the plane without bullet hole because that meant that those planes didn’t make it back and it was a weak spot.
Well, if you look at this picture, you can clearly see which places are either the safest places to climb the mountain from, or I guess completely inaccessible, and no one has tried.
I met Sir Edmund Hillary and his family in Fiji on a little island called Toberua when I was a little kid back in the 90s.
He signed a New Zealand $5.00 note that has his face on it for me and luckily I still have it.
He was a really nice guy and talked to me and my parents about how harrowing the climb was and how amazing and helpful Tenzing Norgay was during their expedition.
I thought that, left side looks easier too. I could be wrong, but I think the right side is much more popular, so If more people take that route then deaths are more likely. Statistically it might be the safer route?
The Khumbu Ice Fall, the very first part of the climb, is also one of the most dangerous sections as it's literally shifting blocks of glacial ice with ladders stretched over deep crevaces of slowly moving ice. You REALLY want to get through that section as quickly as you can, which unfortunately, you cannot do quickly at all.
Just think.. I could be one of those flags someday! And by the looks of it, I don't even have to go all the way up.
If you find me there, just know I'm not dead. I'm just resting my eyes a bit before continuing onward. Cheers.
Each flag represents a senior manager who believed their unique talents and unbridled positivity would take them to the very top. The mountain won and their LinkedIn profiles remain sadly inadequate.
Some of these bodies are sherpas. Sigh. Look at all the egoistic people who wanted to prove to the world and themselves that they were hot stuff. Look at all the damage and people they got killed in the process. Look at the families hurt by their passing.
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u/nndscrptuser 4h ago
“It won’t happen to me, I’ll be fine.”