Posted on 11/29/2012 5:45:33 PM PST by Daffynition
Mount Everest has claimed the lives of over 216 known mountain climbers in recorded history. The area above 26,000 feet is called “the Death Zone”, where breathing fresh oxygen from canisters is necessary for all but the most experienced climbers. The atmospheric pressure is about a third of that at sea level, so there is about one third the amount of oxygen to breathe. The air is so thin, recovery of bodies is impossible. As such, many victims lay where they took their last breath.
(Excerpt) Read more at sometimes-interesting.com ...
Of all the awful headlines to read, this is one of the funniest threads I’ve seen all year!
More dead bodies in the pet cemetery in my backyard
Don’t worry. Global warming will soon melt Mount E’s snow and the bodies will all slide down to basecamp.
this thread is humorous ping
The dead must be cold up there!
Murphy comes to mind.
Which reminds...the McRib is on sale.
Read ‘Into thin air’ and was fascinated.
You have to respect the mountain.
Well, that and fork over a heft price to get into this ‘club’ and then that’s it. Seemingly not a lot of background, just the dough, and you’re in.
What’s the point? To brag you climbed Mt Everest? Or to have your relatives brag you’re buried on top of Mt Everest.
Isn’t it funny. It’s named Mt. EVER REST...
I say find another hobby.
That made me so nervous!
We got a similar thing at Denali here in Alaska, last I heard something like 31 bodies are still up there hidden in buried ravines and such.
re: Into Thin Air. I read that book and I hated everyone in the story and wanted them all dead by the end of it. Come to think of it I felt the same way about Brothers Karamazov.
“My goodness, Commahnduh, it sounds as though theh’s no bull in yuh sto-ry, only a cow!”
“QUITE!” (resumes puffing on his pipe)
If I were his parent, I couldn’t watch that vised even knowing that he made the climb.
“Your story sounds photoshopped.”
Photoshopped nothing, total CGI.
I couldn’t put that book down. An equally great book , with a slightly different slant is “The Beckoning Silence” by Joe Simpson.
-On an ice climb in poor conditions about the valley of La Grave in Hautes Alpes, France, Simpson realizes he has lost his desire to take big risks:
“I had had to stand there and watch while the rest of my life was determined by the shaky adhesion of a few millimeters of frail, melting ice and the dubious friction of a tiny point of metal scratching against a flake of rock. In the past I might have felt that this was what it was all about. This was where you defined yourself, balanced tenuously between life and death. As I stood shakily on a fragile ledge of frozen vegetation, all my justifications for climbing seemed suddenly meaningless.”
-Reflecting upon the deaths of fellow mountaineers and the dangers of nature:
“Mountains are not especially well versed in the notions of fairness. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t always known and willingly accepted this simple fact, but increasingly I felt unhappy about choosing such risks. The attrition of friends over the years had begun to eat away at my confidence, at my nerve, if blind disregard for unavoidable risk can be described as such.”
Thanks for posting. I am fascinated by alpine mountaineering stories.
You’re very welcome. I love mountains and never had the slightest inclination to do the *big* one.
I’d be very happy if I could finish hiking the Appalachian Trail, one day. :)
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