Has anyone ever been so far as to climb this year? Everest 2015

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > Has anyone ever been so far as to climb this year? Everest 2015

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

dad gay. so what posted:

somebody should poo poo on the OP's dick

That's no way to speak about a lady.

Sweepstakes on the number of dead this season? Any number between 0 and 100 (incl. climbers and sherpas, both Tibetan and Nepalese sides)? My pick 41 total.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 21:13

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 00:31

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Chinatown posted:

that woman was a loving moron if it makes you feel any better

She was the first Canadian woman of south Asian descent to become a human popsicle in a $8,000 down suit on the world's highest rubbish tip.

And no one will ever take that record from her. :colbert:

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 21:26

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Gripen5 posted:

I had a thought that they should get those rebreathers that the divers use. But I sure it is prohibitively heavy. I seem to remember reading that you can barely walk in them before getting into the water, but that might have just been due to the dry suit and other gear.

I wondered about that but don't those rebreathers have a 10-20% complete malfunction rate? Killed a whole lot of cavers (in the last thread). Posters itt check your apparatus. tia

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 22:09

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

winner on the death sweepstake 2015 gets to climb and die in 2016. kickstart it

E: Choose your number. I have 41 and I'm afraid of heights :ohdear:

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 22:25

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Rondette, having looked at the photo of your books, I think you'd be the perfect poster to start a mountaineering thread in Book Barn.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 22:58

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Rondette posted:

I have even more now.....I shall corrall them all and share. I am a total armchair mountaineer though, I took the train on Snowdon.

I started the polar exploration thread in the Book Barn and do you think I've ever got scurvy or killed a seal?* Start the thread and the experts will contribute, recommend and answer questions.

* Except by accident.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 23:11

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

What's the betting we see that teenage girl who was planning to ascend last year have a go this year? It got talked about in the last thread but.... :effort:

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 00:05

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Rondette posted:

Gonna yoink this from your thread too....

Yah... Totally called that one. Junior popsicle in training (sadly).

# ¿ Jan 14, 2015 00:53

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

ThePutty posted:

i wonder if there's some sort of academic document explaining exactly what drives people to think climbing everest is going to improve their lives or is even a good idea

Handbook of Psychiatry: Volume 4, The Neuroses and Personality Disorders

# ¿ Jan 14, 2015 01:12

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

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

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

# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 13:05

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Rondette posted:

Here is the short Wikipedia article about it
How he survived the ordeal he went through is nothing short of amazing.

Time to bump the arctic/antarctic polar exploration book thread:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3655083

Rondette, still waiting for you to start that climbing book thread.

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Sweepstakes on the number of dead this season? Any number between 0 and 100 (incl. climbers and sherpas, both Tibetan and Nepalese sides)? My pick 41 total.

Anyone care to join before the body count begins in earnest? (I think 41 is probably too high but... :ohdear:

)

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 20:59

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Boy, 41 really does seem too high - unless the French decide to stage a reality TV contest on Everest this year.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 23:25

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Keith Atherton posted:

I own a ton of books about mountaineering

You're welcome to start a thread in Book Barn on it.

Leperflesh posted:

Pagophiles convene! Arctic fiction/non-fiction discussion is the thread to check, in the book barn. It's not highly trafficked but it has a really good reading list.

Thanks for the bump! It's one of TBB's overlooked gems. Always keen to get recommendations and comment.

Yeah, I turn my back for a few weeks and come back and.... Yeah, let's say a guess of 41 wasn't my finest judgement but I'll stand by it. There's always next season... We need some sort of death counter for that awesome banner, Rondette.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2015 19:35

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

I admit that I am in fact responsible for this disaster by tempting Fate because I a) initiated the death pool and b) posted the unfeasibly high body count of 41, which everyone (including me) thought was excessive. I will be genuinely sorry if I win, which looks a real possibility.

Climbing Everest if you are a professional climber is meaningless; climbing Everest if you are portly dentist with almost no climbing experience in order to quench a nagging personal inadequacy is dumb and meaningless; climbing Everest as a professional porter, guide or sherpa is a difficult and admirable way of making a living (while also being meaningless).

I promise not to tempt Fate again in the near future and will be donating to a relief charity this week.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 20:48

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Rondette posted:

You and me both, bro :\

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 21:34

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 00:31

Josef K. Sourdust: Jul 16, 2014; "To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

For Britgoons, Rondette forgot to tell you you can watch that new BBC K2 documentary online legally here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03td9sc

It is online until Monday 25. Sadly, I don't think the film is available outside of the UK.

# ¿ May 20, 2015 23:26

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