Posted on 05/16/2007 12:00:00 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
KATMANDU, Nepal - A veteran Sherpa guide scaled Mount Everest for a record 17th time Wednesday, beating his own previous record, mountaineering officials said.
Appa, who goes by one name, reached the 29,035-foot summit with seven other Sherpas and a Western climber, said Ang Tshering, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
Appa, 46, is one of the most respected climbers in the mountaineering community. His closest competitor — fellow Sherpa guide Chewang Nima, 41 — scaled the peak a 14th time last year.
Appa, who now lives with his family in Utah, was leading a team calling themselves the "Super Sherpas Expedition" on a charity climb to raise education funds for children of the Nepalese mountain guides.
He and his teammates had set out to make a documentary about the climb and all money raised will go toward providing better education and health care for children in their community at the foothills of the mountain.
Like most Sherpas, Appa grew up in the foothills of Everest, and began carrying equipment and supplies for trekkers and mountaineers at an early age.
He made his first summit of Everest in 1989 and has been climbing almost every year since.
Sherpas were mostly yak herders and traders living in the Himalayas until Nepal opened its borders to tourism in 1950. Their stamina and knowledge of the mountains make them expert guides and porters for foreign mountaineers.
I agree. The 1996 disaster was precipitated by a freak storm and failure to go down in time, which slowed and even halted the descent. But it was altitude sickness that killed them.
The nasty exposure on Everest Southwest Col route begins at 23-25,000 feet. The exposure on K2 begins at the very beginning, and never stops. That's what I've read.
I forgot to mention, Mt. McKinley (Denali) in Alaska also has a brutal rep for a couple reasons.
I'll just cut this from Wikipedia:
Mount McKinley has a larger bulk and rise than Mount Everest. Even though the summit of Everest is about 9,000 feet (2,700 m) higher as measured from sea level, its base sits on the Tibetan Plateau at about 17,000 feet (5,200 m), giving it a real vertical rise of little more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m). The base of Mount McKinley is roughly a 2,000 foot plateau, giving it an actual rise of 18,000 feet (5,500 m).
The mountain is also characterized by extremely cold weather, and by an unusually severe risk of altitude illness for climbers, due to not only its high elevation but also its high latitude.[2] At the equator, a mountain as high as Mount McKinley would have 47% as much oxygen available on its summit as there is at sea level,[3] but because of its latitude, the pressure on the summit of McKinley is even lower.[4
“piece a cake.. eh?
Any climber on the forum ever climb a big ‘un?”
Uh....yeah.....
But I PROMISED not to kiss & tell.....!!!
“But until Europeans came along, none of them had ever been to the summit of Everest?”
Europeans weren’t climbing any of the Alpine mountains either. And they are like ten times shorter than the Himalayas.
Americans weren’t climbing Mt. McKinley until the the 20th century.
The point of climbing a mountain such as Everest before it was technically possible and economically viable? Why would any sane individual risk climbing a mountain for no reason? At least, for the Sherpas, the mountain means business — so they climb or assist tourists/climbers.
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