ImPureAwesome posted:

Do you guys think global warming might play a role in the safety of crossing the icefall and stuff like that as time goes on?

ImPureAwesome posted:

Do you guys think global warming might play a role in the safety of crossing the icefall and stuff like that as time goes on?

Alan Smithee posted:

take a gopro in underwater housing so we can watch the most boring snuff film ever

Pick posted:

i told my dad about this and he said he'd leave my body there for being so stupid

ImPureAwesome posted:

Do you guys think global warming might play a role in the safety of crossing the icefall and stuff like that as time goes on?

bonestructure posted:

I wanted to kick in a couple of things about the Sherpa. Though six weeks twenty years ago does not an expert make by any means, so bear that in mind. I was told by the sirdar of our climb, Jimi Ryu, that the major reason why body recovery is such an issue is that Sherpa have a strong belief that touching a dead body is extremely unlucky and brings the wrath of spirits down on you. It's possible to hire a team to recover a body, but it'll take a lot of doing, a lot of persuading, and a lot of money offered, and that's not because of the (considerable) physical risk, but because whoever you hire to bring back a body is going to see his ordinary business disappear for at least a year, if not forever. It's virtually impossible to get a truly skilled and experienced sirdar to agree to head up a body recovery expedition.

Someone mentioned the average salary of a sirdar (climbing Sherpa) earlier in the thread; they make incredible bank by Nepali standards and they're respected and admired, they're more or less the rockstars of their community. It takes years of experience and of consistently showing above-average climbing abilities, making good decisions, and playing lesser roles in successful expeditions to get to the point where other Sherpa will recognize you as a qualified sirdar, expedition outfitters will hire you as a one, etc. Go on a body recovery effort and you've tainted yourself with bad luck and angry spirits. Porters won't want to work for you. Sherpa-run outfitters take you off their list of available sirdars. When Western people ask about you, other Sherpa just sort of smile and nod and point them elsewhere. You have to go through a fairly rigorous and long-lasting (sometimes years) set of purification actions before other Sherpa consider you not to be tainted any more, and even then if something bad happens on your first expedition out after purifying yourself, you're done. You now have a reputation for being cursed and unlucky. No Sherpa will want to work with you or hire you any more, and your lucrative career and community status just vanished. No matter how much money someone is offering for a body recovery, there are always very, very few takers, and the people who agree are either Hindu and usually from the Newari Valley (ie, not nearly as familiar or capable as a Sherpa), or completely desperate. It's almost impossible to get a Sherpa to do the actual body recovery. Even just heading up the expedition, with other people doing the actual work with the corpse, is massive bad luck in their eyes.

That ties into why the Sherpa didn't climb Everest earlier, though they certainly could have. They believe mountain summits are sacred and that spirits live there, and to go to a summit is to risk disturbing those spirits and pissing them off. If you look at photos of base camp (any climbing base camp, not just Everest) you'll see long strings of brightly-colored flags all over. Those are Buddhist prayer flags. A big part of any summit expedition (at least if you want to keep your porters and sirdar happy) is religious observances. Just for a small peak like Kusum, we still paid a visit to Tengboche monastery first and asked for the lama's blessing, so that going to the summit wouldn't anger the mountain spirit into taking revenge. This might sound goofy to Western ears but the Sherpa aren't kidding. If the climbers on a trip refuse to do whatever observances the sirdar feels is necessary, chances are the first time the tiniest thing goes wrong you'll wake up to find that half your porters have left in the night and aren't coming back. The Sherpa also believe very strongly that if you die on the mountain, you should stay on the mountain. It was your fate, you chose it, it's not for someone else to try to mess with it.

That said, don't think of Sherpa as ignorant or superstitious. All of the Sherpa I met during my time in Nepal were intelligent people who were very aware of the modern world and what was going on outside of Nepal, but they have a tightly-knit and ancient culture and a set of beliefs that are very deeply meaningful to them and central to their lives. They're also some of the friendliest, most genuinely kind, hospitable, gracious people I've ever known, ethical and loyal to a fault, incredibly brave (Jimi once got avalanched while he was fixing protection on an ice face; while we all panicked and freaked out, he suddenly popped out of a drift with a big grin, waving his ice axe and announcing "Sherpa!! Tigers of the snow!!!"), utterly uncomplaining, smart and tenacious, and tough as old boots. When they refuse body recovery, it's not out of fear or inability. Just about everyone who visits that part of Nepal leaves with a very deep and sincere admiration for the Sherpa in general. They're amazing people.

I haven't read Krakauer's book or seen the documentaries, so this might have already been thoroughly covered there, sorry if so. I did find this link, which I think is a very good explanation of both why body recovery is such a culturally fraught subject, and also illustrates the difficulty of it. This is an account from a member of an IMAX film crew of the recovery of the body of a Sherpa who was killed just above Camp 2. It details just how difficult the recovery was even relatively low on the mountain. It's not hard to extrapolate from this account how much more difficult this would be in the dead zone.

http://www.seracfilms.com/projects/...dy_recovery.htm

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Found this informative post (about body recovery) on an earlier thread, which is really worth reading.

Meatwave posted:

That's pretty interesting. Westerners asking Sherpas to help with body removal is like asking them, "Hey, how much do I have to pay you to completely destroy your career and wreck all your relationships with friends and family?"

Meatwave posted:

That's pretty interesting. Westerners asking Sherpas to help with body removal is like asking them, "Hey, how much do I have to pay you to completely destroy your career and wreck all your relationships with friends and family?"

Cojawfee posted:

What? I'm pretty sure they don't want there to be any bodies on the mountain as it is sacred. They'd remove all the bodies if it were possible.

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

The Sherpa also believe very strongly that if you die on the mountain, you should stay on the mountain. It was your fate, you chose it, it's not for someone else to try to mess with it.

sweat poteto posted:

I'm really enjoying Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales. It's about the psychology of survival, down to the level of brain activity, memory and emotions. Discusses loads of real life examples including many mountaineering incidents (the Simpson/Yates story and a recent multiple-fatality on Mt Hood). It's drat interesting, particularly if you've ever wondered wtf some otherwise experienced person makes seemingly terrible decisions with bad consequences.

Maneck posted:

Does he explain this one?

XMNN posted:

speaking of that guy, I found his website earlier

http://deepcave.com/

its got some photos including of the dead people cave, the dive report from when he found the guys body and a live blog of the preparations for the retrieval

Damo posted:

so what exactly happened last everest season after the dozen or whatever sherpas died? did anyone besides the small self sufficient pro dudes summit? did all the giant pay-to-win climb groups sit out the season?

quote:

Montaz-Rosset told me that the aim will be to run up and down the northern Tibet side starting from one of the last inhabited places before base camp, Rongbuk Monastery, at sixteen thousand four hundred feet. That route would translate to some twelve thousand five hundred feet of elevation gain—a little less than on Aconcagua. Jornet intends to carry only a backpack, without oxygen or the assistance of fixed ropes or other climbers.

If he succeeds, he will hold another F.K.T. by virtue of being the first to speed-ascend-descend the Tibetan route, Russell Brice, a longtime Everest guide and the owner of the mountaineering-guide company Himalayan Experience, told me in an e-mail. He believes Jornet has the ability to set the F.K.T. But he has also cautioned Jornet to have ample support and advised that he first gain experience on another major Himalayan peak. “For mountain runners like Kílian, they just keep pushing the limits until one day they say that is enough,” Brice said. “Or, they in fact have an accident and do not survive.”

elwood posted:

one thing to look forward to this year:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/kilian-jornet-sky-runner?intcid=mod-latest

quote:

he will hold another F.K.T. by virtue of being the first to speed-ascend-descend the Tibetan route while carrying a dvd copy of Men in Black 3

Troublemaker posted:

My 5-year old loves Hidden Object games, and when I was looking for some new ones I found Expedition Everest, so of course I bought it for him. I was surprised to see it was narrated by an animated Ed Viestures. He gives little Everest facts and climbing and camping tips throughout the game, and even has his photo album with Everest pictures and videos you can flip through. Pretty cool. (Too bad the game has little to do with Everest until the very end, and then it just gets super weird.)

Unfortunately, now my little guy wants to climb Mt. Everest. It's all he talks about. He also wants to be an inventor when he grows up, so he has plans to build a restaurant inside the mountain with an elevator up to the top. It's sad that he has exactly as much mountain climbing experience as the yellow suit chick.

texasmed posted:

Troublemaker posted:

My 5-year old loves Hidden Object games, and when I was looking for some new ones I found Expedition Everest, so of course I bought it for him. I was surprised to see it was narrated by an animated Ed Viestures. He gives little Everest facts and climbing and camping tips throughout the game, and even has his photo album with Everest pictures and videos you can flip through. Pretty cool. (Too bad the game has little to do with Everest until the very end, and then it just gets super weird.)

Unfortunately, now my little guy wants to climb Mt. Everest. It's all he talks about. He also wants to be an inventor when he grows up, so he has plans to build a restaurant inside the mountain with an elevator up to the top. It's sad that he has exactly as much mountain climbing experience as the yellow suit chick.

Cliff Racer posted:

Thats the guy who ran up the Eiger right? Man, he's going to provide us all with a hilarious death some day. I hope it has more detail than the snowboard guy.

Maneck posted:

How is that even going to work with all the people queuing to get past certain parts?

quote:

Around 1880, the Tsangpo River was still a mystery. Was this river, which flows from west to east through Tibet, perhaps the same river that flows into the Bay of Bengal under the name of Brahmaputra, as Nain Singh thought? To find this out, the colonial government of India sent a Sikkimese pundit named Kinthup into Tibet, together with a Chinese lama, as whose servant he would act. They were to throw logs into the Tsangpo, fifty logs a day for ten days. Along the Brahmaputra, surveyors would be on the lookout for these logs. However, the lama proved unreliable. He wasted time on flirting with various women and eating and drinking with his colleagues, and then sold Kinthup to a Tibetan lama. After seven months in slavery, Kinthup managed to escape, and travelled east along the Tsangpo. His master nearly captured him, but he fled into a Buddhist monastery, and the head lama bought him from his previous owner.
Despite all, Kinthup was still dedicated to his task, and after a few months he asked permission to make a pilgrimage, and used his leave to cut and mark the logs. He did not throw them in the water yet - it was eighteen months since he had left India, and he realized that no one would be looking for the logs any more. So Kinthup returned to the monastery, some time later asked for permission to make a pilgrimage again, and went to Lhasa, where he had a fellow Sikkimese bring a letter to the survey authorities to tell about his fate, and announce when he would be throwing the logs into the river. Kinthup returned to the monastery, and on his next leave threw the logs into the river as announced. Only then he returned to India, but there disappointment awaited him. His letter had not reached India, and his report of his travels was not believed.

Kinthup left the survey and became a tailor. Only many years later did geographers realize that his reports and his story were completely correct - and that the Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra were indeed the same river.

quote:

Kinthup, a Lepcha man from Sikkim, was an explorer in the area of Tibet in the 1880s. He is best known for his impressive devotion to duty in surveying a previously unknown area of Tibet.[1]

In the 1870s, the destination of the Tsangpo River (sometimes spelled "Sanpo") was unknown. Some hypothesized that it was the same river that flowed into the Bay of Bengal under the name of Brahmaputra (also known as "Dihang")? To solve this mystery, the colonial government of India sent a pundit explorer, known only as "G. M. N." to follow the Tsangpo and determine its ultimate destination. G. M. N. was accompanied by his assistant, a Sikkimese lepcha named Kinthup.[1] After surveying a good portion of the river, the pair returned to India. In 1880, a Chinese Lama was employed to continue G. M. N.'s work, and Kinthup was again hired to accompany him.[1] However, in May 1881, this Lama sold Kinthup as a slave to another Tibetan lama. All of Kinthup's surveying equipment and notebooks were taken from him, and he served as a slave until March 1882, when Kinthup finally managed to escape.[1] He traveled east along the Tsangpo, and sought sanctuary in a Buddhist monastery, where he was welcomed by the head lama.

Despite this Kinthup carried out his surveying. Over the course of two and a half years, under the guise of religious pilgrimages, he made several long trips, surveying the extent of the Tsangpo and surrounding region, determining that the two rivers were indeed one and the same. Finally, in November 1884, he was able to return to India.[1] It was not until 2 years later that his account was even recorded, and even then, his extraordinary accounts were doubted by some geographers.[1] It was only more than 30 years later, when a proper survey was carried out, was his story confirmed.[1]

raditts posted:

So speed-running mountains is a thing now?

Or in this case, speed-dying I guess.