rotinaj posted:

Because then the people buying the slots have to be lucky in a whole new way. It becomes the ultimate rich person gamble.

I'm not saying it's a good thing or a good idea, just that a certain type of person already driven to try to summit Everest would also probably love the gambling aspect of whether their day is good weatherwise.

Azathoth posted:

I think trying to place the physical damage as happening in the tent is harder than saying they got scared out of the tent by what was eventually going to cause it, then whatever it was hit them nearer to where their bodies were found, just because the tent site was so pristine.

Like, I can buy that the damage some of them took was from being bashed by a big block of snow and ice, but something big enough to do that kind of damage wouldn't disappear in a couple weeks when their tracks did not.

The obvious solution is that the they were killed by yeti, who threw blocks of ice at them, and then disposed of the murder weapons and covered their tracks with their radiation guns to melt the snow and back into the surrounding landscape.

Azathoth posted:

The gear wasn't stuck under a mass of snow and ice. It was right on the surface where the search parties found it. You can see the remains of the tent in the pictures. It's drifted over, but even after almost a month, it's still perfectly visible. It being buried would have been a sign of an avalanche, that was what they expected, they didn't find that.

And they didn't go to the treeline in a group, they went in at least 3 separate groups down to the trees, two of which survived long enough to start building fires, taking usable gear off their dead friends, climb trees for visibility/kindling, etc. The groups did not make an effort to link up, though it's hard to know when each group died.

Only at the very end of their lives did anyone try to go back, but none of them made it. The entire time the survivors of the physical trauma were dying of exposure around makeshift fires, their tent and gear, including a stove, were just up the slope, but only at the very end of their lives did anyone even try to go back.

Azathoth posted:

The point is, there was no sign of an avalanche at their location, literally none. As in, their camp was only buried by drifting snow, not a small avalanche, not a big avalanche, not a slab avalanche. When they edited the tent, there's no evidence that it was covered at all.

The article just says that an avalanche was possible, which is a contradiction of previous conventional wisdom about the slope not being steep enough, and that the injuries were consistent with a slab avalanche, but they have to twist themselves into some interesting knots to have some people fine and some people sleeping next to them bashed to hell.

They literally don't even mention a possible solution for how all evidence of an avalanche strong enough to kill several people just up and disappears, leaving no trace. Just absolutely hand wave it away to say "MYSTERY SOLVED?" like comes up every year or two when some site needs some good clickbait.

emf posted:

real question for a sec: has anyone other than me who's weighing in on this (or lurking) gone back-country cross-country skiing (snow-showing/whatevs) and winter camping (alpine or not)

i'm not trying to gate-keep because i don't give a poo poo if anyone wants to armchair analyze some armchair analysis of a bunch of long-dead white-russians, and i actually really enjoy the stochastic conversations which only goons can create in their infinite capacity to but I am a little curious how many goons itt are out-doorsey folks with winter experience

tia

The Walrus posted:

and yet despite my just-learned-of-hubris my first reaction is 'they probably weren't being bear safe', mostly because I myself need to be able to sleep in the wilderness. shout out to the fuckin whatever it was that left a sun bleached moose bone right outside my tent overnight this summer.

Rah! posted:

Yeah lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyya23MPoAI

Leperflesh posted:

Anyway the point is I wish we didn't just enable people who engage in this sort of behavior, although taking away their freedom also seems like a really harsh thing to do.

AARD VARKMAN posted:

knox_harrington posted:

I enjoy climbing mountains and ski touring and stuff. European alps, no Sherpas involved. Just wondering, at what point does my death become funny? I am a corporate middle manager if that helps

Mr Beef Head posted:

I enjoyed a short scifi story about being the first to climb a 60k+ peak on some far off world. It doesnt seem to be trying for accuracy but has some of these ideas, being way past where you can survive.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/walk-nameless-ridge/

Comrade Koba posted:

We’ll be sure to tell that to the people whose job it is to drag your blissfully smiling corpse off a mountain peak or underwater cave.

Achmed Jones posted:

but i don't have to. i'm just a guy on the internet, not a nepali policymaker

Rondette posted:

Adjacent to this moron's live stream, I've been morbidly hooked on this Youtube channel that shares Hiking Horror stories- this one, in particular, stood out. One of the most experienced thru-hikers of the time made a bad judgment call, and paid for it in the worst way possible;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cajFMKgOUZc

Another one that got to me was the story of this guy called 'Mostly Harmless' who was thru-hiking anonymously. He talked to people, had photos taken then was found, sometime later, starved to death in his tent despite having food nearby. It took a hell of a lot of effort to find his true identity, but they did in the end. It's a real sad story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYfmWUtg2pg

It's a rabbit hole that this thread will probably appreciate.

Mumpy Puffinz posted:

OOHHH You're gonna die here.
Yeah we loving know