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I'm guessing 17. Only 5 people died in avalanches in Canada this year, which is lower than normal. But they were told to stay the gently caress away because we had a warm winter and conditions were really, really bad. There were days it would rain on fresh snow, creating a really slippery snow crust, which would then get a meter of powder on top, then rain and freeze again. I guess people actually listened for once. I was expecting a really ugly season.
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Mar 13, 2015 04:57
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Goddamn, Everest is such a poo poo-show. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31587654
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Mar 13, 2015 16:43
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I guessed high because of a ripple effect from last year. The government may allow even more climbers this year, those climbers are going to be extra desperate to summit. Wonder if there's going to be some hot head who decides not to use sherpas because he's all mad at them cancelling last year in respect of their fallen comrades and ends up dying.
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Mar 14, 2015 19:23
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Trivia posted:Just watched Touching the Void. Goddamn that was a great story. Reminded me of Into Thin Air. Touching the Void is one of my favourite movies, I've watched it too many times. It's extremely well directed.
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Mar 16, 2015 07:57
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We need to finish global warming so the permafrost line moves far enough up slope to allow microbes and plants to grow and break that poo poo down.
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Mar 19, 2015 00:10
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Hey, did any video game nerd ever go to Everest base camp? Wasn't that a prize being given away by the geniuses behind FarCry 4? PostNouveau posted:Multiply this by 1000, and you're telling the story of how a bunch of the rivers/mountains in America got their name. The offensive ones are the best. Our best local mountain name is Squaw's Tit. How it still is that, I'm not sure, especially after there was a successful campaign to rename Chinaman Peak that is literally only a couple kilometers away.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:12
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Wasabi the J posted:Nah, I've seen this pose on Everest before... Someone photoshop him playing Farcry 4
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Mar 20, 2015 12:19
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As someone who came within inches of dying on a mountain I implore you PS wizards. I need this.
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Mar 20, 2015 12:21
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raditts posted:And I need the story behind this, you can't come into the official Death By Mountain thread and not tell the story of your near-death by mountain. Leperflesh posted:If you've ever hiked up a real mountain, you've probably come within inches of dying on that mountain. I certainly have. This is exactly it. I've told this story before on the forums, but it's kind of interesting so I'll tell again. I was on my way down from a fairly easy peak called East End of Rundle in the Canadian Rockies, and there was a thunderstorm approaching when I was still above treeline. I was trying to get back into the trees quickly at least before it hit because lightning is a major concern out in the open. There was a section of trail that traversed a cliff band that wasn't difficult at all, it was straight and flat, but it was a cliff band. Steep drop off on the left. There was a great view of a lake valley ahead of me and I was paying more attention to it than my feet. I was with my husband, who was walking ahead of me telling me a story about work. Just as he turned around to make some hand gestures, I strayed enough off the path that my foot stepped on the edge of the path and it crumbled away. I pretty much fell headfirst over the side of the cliff. I remember just saying fairly calmly "oh my god" and then a bunch of blurry moments as I tumbled head over heels down a rocky face. It was only 15 feet, but it felt a lot farther and longer than that. When I stopped on a small ledge, I had lost my glasses, I was on my belly with my backpack pulled up over my head, and underneath a few big rocks. I still had my hiking poles strapped to my hands, which actually made things worse as I couldn't grab for anything to stop my fall. I was actually pretty calm. I heard my husband saying he was coming down to help me, and I gave instructions on what to do to help me sort myself out. "Take the poles off, move this rock pinning my shoulder and head, take off my pack, help me sit against the rocks over there."I asked if my glasses broke, but he had found them, and they were in tact aside from a couple scratches and chips. When I put them on and sat facing out over the valley, I saw where I was and loving froze. I was on a small ledge overlooking a 500 foot drop, and my feet had been hanging out over it. There was 100% no way I would have survived if I had gone over. I would have splattered. I was pretty injured, but nothing broken. I had a huge gash in my head that soaked half my hair, half my face, and a bunch of my shirt in blood, and nearly every inch of me was scraped and/or bruised and/or cut. My right knee couldn't bend at all. My husband tried to get me to stand up to attempt to walk the rest of the way down but between the injuries and fear, I didn't feel like I could do it at all. There were a few places below where I would have to downclimb exposed rock faces. It would have been immensely dangerous, so we called for a rescue. A helicopter showed up to scope out the situation, and they decided that a heli-sling was the only safe option. The lowered a two-man team down, fitted me with a neckbrace, and strapped me onto a spineboard. Hooked me up to a cable hanging underneath the helicopter, and flew me to a nearby waiting ambulance. I was lowered onto a stretcher, and put into the back of the vehicle with a group of 4 guys. They tried for 20 minutes to get an IV in, but I was in shock and my veins were all shriveled up. Took all 4 on both arms to finally get it. They had gone back to get my husband, and he was waiting the whole time freaking out that something was seriously wrong in our car, which was at the same place as the ambulance was parked. When they finally managed to get the IV in, we raced into the closest town to the hospital. I ended up with 10 stitches in my head, and another three in my leg where a rock had stabbed my shin. Because it's Canada, the entire rescue cost $25.00. There was a short newspaper article written about me, with one of the rescuers saying that "one more bounce and the fall would have been fatal." When I was sitting on the ledge, I vowed to never summit another peak ever again. The next day, I figured that I probably would again, just not this year. A few days after that, I couldn't wait to start going again. It took 4 weeks to recover and feel normal again. 5 weeks after my fall, I was back on a summit. I just really love it, I couldn't stop. I ended up with a few big scars on my legs, my left knuckles that had been completely skinned off, and the one on my head which is like 2 or 3 inches long. One of these days I should shave my head just so I can see that bastard. It's raised up pretty far too.
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Mar 20, 2015 19:25
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Bhodi posted:I find it really weird people freak out over that. The sky is over you and everything. Maybe I was made for spelunking and just found a new sport. You're just not claustrophobic. I am. I've been in a cave where I had to pretty much slither across the floor through a hole with my back touching the top. Hated every second of it. DicktheCat posted:Glad you were in a place with good healthcare! Me too! I even got a week's supply of T3s for free.
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Mar 21, 2015 06:28
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I take personal offence to Bitcoin being promoted on a mountain. Take your flag and shove it up your rear end.
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Mar 23, 2015 08:16
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Butt Wizard posted:There aren't any really huge mountains in NZ (at least in the North Island) with the exception of Taranaki and Ruapehu. Ruapehu seems to be rated as an 'experienced alpine climb' so I might take some time off over summer and check out some of the lower reaches of the climb and just see what it's like a couple of hundred metres above the car park, how quickly weather changes, etc. Active volcanoes aren't that scary. Mt. Batur in Bali is quite active, erupting twice in the last century. and I went to the top in 2013. We did it at night even, it's a pretty popular tourist attraction to hike it's slopes to watch the sunrise. There are two places to hike to: the old caldera ridge, and the new summit. On the caldera ridge, I decided to go off on my own without a guide, and walked through a steam vent. Gladly the emissions weren't toxic or scalding. I was just walking when all of a sudden I felt an intense wall of heat and incredible humidity. I was like "Woah, that could have been bad". I assumed that if it was actually dangerous, it would have been blocked off. But it was super awesome and totally worth it. I walked through a volcanic steam vent! What a cool story! The concept of risk-taking is usually viewed as negative consequences only. Many people think "Could something bad happen? Yes? Not worth it". Risk actually means both bad and good. Sure, there's danger involved in a lot of outdoor pursuits, but in reality there's danger involved in everything you do. Are the rewards worth taking that risk? I usually say yes. When you're interested in adventure, you just accept that sometimes things can go wrong. I've gone through some really sketchy situations. The aforementioned cliff accident. Being woken in my tent by a nosy grizzly bear in the middle of the night while I'm two days walk from civilization. Swimming 300 meters off shore in an unfamiliar area, at risk of being dragged out to sea by riptides. The risk was worth the reward every time. What I'm saying is, yes, things could go wrong. But the likeliness of that happening is far less than you having a badass awesome time. Climb that loving mountain. If you have the skill. Don't be like the glory-hungry rich douchebags on Everest. They're the worst. No amount of money can out-weigh the risk undertaken by inexperienced scumbuckets just looking for a new way to stroke their ego. There's a difference between people like them and people like me. No one should ever be like Canadian lady, photoshopping themselves into a wheelchair accessible alpine lake scene to raise funds for a suicide mission. There's a difference between "I'M GOING TO CLIMB EVEREST" and "I love to climb mountains and Everest is the tallest so I'm going to do it!" Well that was rambly. Sorry.
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Mar 23, 2015 08:50
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Cojawfee posted:Cross posting from the bitcoin thread: Oh my god that is loving stupid.
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Mar 24, 2015 00:55
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 Found someone to watch this year! http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-man-to-attempt-new-route-on-mt-everest-1.3005301 This is an astronomy prof at the university I go to. He's actually a pretty badass guy, but he's trying a completely new route from China with two other mountaineers, no Sherpas, no oxygen. So this will either be completely awesome or a big disaster. At least we have one person so far who's actually been on a mountain before instead of just going to an indoor climbing gym a few times to 'condition'.
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Mar 24, 2015 02:09
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nerdz posted:How hilarious would it be if the bitcoin guy can't even manage to get to the base camp I'm banking on it.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:55
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Fabricated posted:I'm kinda surprised there isn't a lot of good gopro footage of people falling off mountains. When I realized I was going over, I said surprisingly calmly "oh my god" then was silent for the rest of it. Here's an interesting read about a guy who was in one of the worst avalanche accidents in Canadian history: http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/buried-alive-an-avalanche-survivor-breaks-his-silence/ In 2003, 7 students from a Calgary school were killed in an avalanche on a routine ski field trip. One of my profs at school is friends with the teacher of that class, and she talks about how hard it's been for him to be scrutinized so harshly for something that wasn't his fault. It's not like you expect a 2600 foot wide avalanche to barrel into the bottom of the valley in relatively safe conditions. It's a shame that this incident had all but killed all back country trips for students here for some time. I got to teach map and compass skills to a bunch of Grade 9 students last fall in preparation for their trip out to Vancouver Island to backpack the West Coast Trail. I truly believe these kinds of trips are really good for the growth and development of young people. It's really depressing that one bad incident can ruin everything forever. We see it all the time, sadly. Things won't always go right in wilderness situations, no matter how prepared and conditioned you are. A lot of people firmly believe that if there's any chance of risk, it's not worth taking. I think that's a load of bullshit. I've taken some huge risks out there, and have felt abject terror many times from pushing myself past my comfort zone. Except for one instance, it's always been worth it. The risk payed off, and I was rewarded. Life is boring if you don't feel fear every now and then.
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Apr 1, 2015 06:25
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Philosopher King posted:Am I too late on the death pool? I vote 57. An entire ice shelf comes down and flattens everyone at once. Another 3 people die trying to rescue others. Bonus points if it was caused by someone attempting to rock out on the mountain. Wait, there's sea ice on Everest? I never knew that. Pretty neat!
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Apr 3, 2015 05:01
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Someone I know through Facebook knew this guy RIP http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ow/46802432.cms
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Apr 4, 2015 10:20
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Frozen Horse posted:Have people tried portable oxygen concentrators for mountaineering? It seems like one that has been re-engineered for light weight and to run directly off a small gas motor instead of batteries would give a lot more breathable oxygen per kg than schlepping tanks around. I don't think that exists yet. If you could make one small enough to fit in a pack and just use white gas same as your cooking stove, then it might be an option. Some enterprising goon up to the challenge?
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Apr 5, 2015 04:03
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I'm just going to ignore all that other poo poo and respond to this.Murphy Brownback posted:I used to think about maybe one day climbing some big mountains - not Everest or K2, but maybe the Matterhorn or Kilimanjaro. Then I went to Zermatt and took the cable car up to the Klein Matterhorn at a relatively measly height of 3820m. Under no physical strain at all I still felt very uncomfortable, like I was on the verge of being sick or passing out, or both. I can't imagine dealing with that feeling at even higher altitudes while doing physically demanding tasks, so I'll just leave that to other people and I'll just continue reading about it/watching movies about it. You would quite likely not feel that if you were to climb rather than take the cable car. It's not always the actual elevation, but speed of the ascent. I got altitude sickness from hiking up a mountain that was 3000m in elevation, but I had also driven from 1050m to 2200m in less than an hour, then scrambling up that last little bit as fast as I could. You have to acclimatize to the decreased oxygen levels. It's said that when you get above 10,000', you shouldn't move faster than 1000' vertical per day or you're really at risk. BElow that threshold, you can obviously move faster since the atmosphere is thicker, but moving a decent distance up in a really short amount of time can certainly have an effect on you.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:18
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There's some neat stuff in this Nat Geo article, like how the Nepali government tripled the life insurance pay out on Sherpas. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150408-everest-climbing-sherpas-mountaineering-nepal-himalaya-guides/#routeOne 
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Apr 9, 2015 00:58
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I have a friend who lives in New Dehli who is talking about feeling it on Facebook, so I went to the USGS earthquake map, and saw it was centered in Nepal. I was being facetious with my death count number, but now I'm not so sure.  There's been a lot of foreshocks and aftershocks too, Here's a link to the site and specific area: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthqua...2%3Afalse%7D%7D
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Apr 25, 2015 10:24
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gently caress, some one I know is in Nepal right now, he's my friend's boyfriend, and my friend is headed there in 3 days to meet up with him. I didn't realize he was there already. loving hell, I hope he's okay. He wasn't in the Kathmandu Valley, so I think so? Goddammit. 
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Apr 26, 2015 02:55
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ethanol posted:the sierras are just a little mini version but with trees, modern infrastructure and other cool poo poo Skip this, come to Canada instead. Here's some pics by your's truly.       We want more tourist dollars because Harper cut almost all our funding and now people are going in and poaching our bears and everythings dying because all our rangers and scientists were fired
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Apr 27, 2015 04:41
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I'm seeing reports that there were about 100 people at camps 1 and 2, and all are alive but the route down was completely destroyed. Base camp is still being dug out.
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Apr 27, 2015 06:41
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Fansy posted:thousands of locals are dead or missing but I'm only seeking out stories about the tourists. Did you read the thread title at all?
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Apr 27, 2015 06:54
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Figured I'd menton that I ran into my friend today at MEC (Canadian REI) and his boyfriend is safe, but has very little access to food. So my friend's bringing a huge stash of backpacking food to get by when he heads out tomorrow and they're going to work cleanup over there instead of the original plan of trekking. I also found out today that someone I went to high school was also there and is currently still missing. Kind of strange to know people who are going through this right now.
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Apr 27, 2015 23:21
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gently caress my friends are still over there.
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May 12, 2015 08:45
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Ruggan posted:You don't mean AT Everest, do you? Just in the country? Not Everest, no, but not far away. They were in a small village in the Kathmandu valley, buying supplies and helping rebuild homes. They just posted some photos a few hours ago because they broke the $5000 mark for fundraising.
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May 12, 2015 08:51
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There's some big aftershocks going on, 6.3 just now.
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May 12, 2015 09:22
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Friends are safe!
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May 12, 2015 11:41
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dj_clawson posted:Gimme a link to the fundraising site please. It's just through their personal e-mails. And I don't know if new GBS can be trusted so I'm reluctant to post them.
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May 12, 2015 18:47
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Outrail posted:Tell us more about other continents. From what I understand from school and research projects, the Rocky Mountain chain and Yellowstone National Park were all products of a thin wrinkle in the North American plate which slammed into the Pacific and Juan de Fuca plates. This wrinkle was a weak point for tectonic forces, so the mountains formed on it instead of the edge of the plate. That explains why the American Rockies are so far inland away from the plate boundary, and the entire mountain chain has hot springs, geysers, etc. It's also why there's threat of a volcano in Yellowstone. They don't just form anywhere, but where the crust is thin. Also, much of the province of British Columbia in Canada is amalgamated volcanic islands squished together by tectonics.
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May 13, 2015 00:49
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I Greyhound posted:Post your favorite geological event you wish you could have seen. Mine would be the collapse of Mt Manzama to firm the Crater Lake caldera. There are riverbeds in Calgary with an exposed ash layer from that volcano, it's like an inch thick. It's really neat stuff too, it's silky feeling between your fingers because it's so fine, but if you chew it with your teeth it's super gritty because it's basically powdered glass.
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May 13, 2015 20:35
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zedprime posted:If you're a fast talker you can get geologists to stick anything in their mouth. Yeah, like the prof I was with. Granted, she did it first. And it can't hurt you, it was safe and really neat.
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May 14, 2015 00:03
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Bugsmasher posted:I'd love to check this out and show my kids, can you give approximate locations to see it in Calgary? The place I'm most familiar with is here: 51°04’36”N, 114°10’38”W  Click for big.  It's the white-ish pink layer about an inch or two thick near the bottom of the exposed section at the top of the cutbank. You can park along Bowdale Crescent and find a worn path that cuts across the railway tracks to the river.
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May 17, 2015 02:48
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This might be of interest to people, I've posted it in the hiking thread before. Parks Canada posts accident reports for all major incidents in the Canadian Rockies National Parks, in hopes that it's used as a tool for people to learn from others' mistakes and accidents. They range from really experienced people who just encounter bad luck/nature just being nature, to extreme idiots completely out of their league. They go back to 2010. http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/mtn/securiteenmontagne-mountainsafety/accidents.aspx For the August 13 2011 Mt. Aberdeen incident, I was actually at the staging area for the helicopter while preparing for a scramble, so I filmed the helicopter. Sorry for my dumb hoser accent. http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/mtn/securiteenmontagne-mountainsafety/accidents/2011/08-2011.aspx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DtmMQ7UOMY And here's a really cool video of a technical rescue of a climber who had been hit by rockfall. It's the same helicopter team that performed my rescue, but I wasn't in a national park so it was a different ground team and agency. (My incident is not included in the above lists because of that) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_4n_4Qhu4
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May 22, 2015 04:04
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It probably varies by jurisdiction, but in my case it was just the heli team and EMS involved in the rescue. The cops didn't show up until after I had been stabilized in hospital. They questioned me and my husband separately to make sure no one was criminally responsible. There is one recent incident locally where a guy had to pay full cost of the heli rescue because his dog got stuck on technical terrain and they flew in to get it.
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May 24, 2015 06:15
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prinneh posted:So besides kilimanjaro, mt fuji and Mount Kinabalu what are some reasonable mountains to climb/hike that aren't dangerous, but still pretty spectacular for someone with no real climbing experience? Preferably something not in the usa as I'm in Europe. Kinabalu! I love that mountain! I got to see it while on a field school a couple years ago. It's ridiculous.   This was from 30km/19 miles away. I was standing at an elevation of 1400' at a place called Sabah Tea Garden, and it's summit is 13,435'. It's loving massive.
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May 26, 2015 05:14
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I would honestly rather lead an expedition to find Irvine's body than actually summit the mountain.
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May 27, 2015 07:54
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