Macabre dead body photos on Everest

Hobby-climbers!

How do they pee and deuce in such conditions?

let's get serious wrote:

How do they pee and deuce in such conditions?

Knowing the internet, I would not be surprised if there's a website dedicated to all the frozen turds on Everest as well.

They pack and carry their poo. No kidding.

Carnivore 69 wrote:

It was observed that no attempt was made to rescue David Sharp, although it was apparent that, while unconscious, he was still alive while other climbers passed him and continued on their own ascents.

See, this seems messed up to me. I understand it on the descent, when you are about to die yourself, but the ascent? I mean, you obviously have the energy to continue climbing to the top, so why can't you grab the guy and head back with him instead of summitting?

Let's say you were on pace to PR in the marathon and at mile 18 you noticed a runner fall and go into cardiac arrest. You are a doctor (or EMT, let's say). No one else is around. Do you stop and help him or run by him? The choice is easy, you save the dude's life, even if it means losing the PR. Anyone who did any different is a total ass and probably breaking some sort of law. How is climbing different?

That's what happens when the cost of climbing Everest is 80K, plus weeks spent away from work at base camp acclimatizing. For most people, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity and the types who climb Everest have enormous egos and won't back down, no matter what.

If you have to stop late in a marathon, you can always run another one. Look at Dylan Wykes, who had to pull out of Fukuoka last year more than halfway through the race and then he came back and ran the Canadian Olympic standard in a PR at Rotterdam a few weeks later. Most of the people who fail to reach the summit of Everest won't get another opportunity.

It's easy to sit here in the comfort of our homes and criticize climbers but, if people really cared about human suffering, they would forgo buying a new cell phone or TV and spend that money on poverty-stricken people in Third World countries who are dieing every day from preventable diseases. If we cared, we'd all be lobbying our own governments to ensure that every human being in the World has access to clean drinking water, nutritional food and shelter. Ensuring that everyone has clean drinking water would cost a fraction of what the U.S. spends on the military every year, but few people care enough to do anything. Why should a climber be expected to give up their lifelong dream and risk their own life to maybe save a stranger's when few non-climbers in the First World are willing to forgo some of their own ridiculous luxuries to ensure the survival of those suffering around the globe?

If the climbers are guilty of some crime or moral code violation than aren't we all?

Slobbb wrote:

How is climbing different?

There's no way you can get somebody down who can't move by themselves. This is climbing on an icy steep mountain, not running on a paved road in shorts. Your oxygen is limited and you have to get down before night sets in. If you spend extra effort on helping somebody your chances of getting down alive diminish drastically.

Everest may not be an extreme climbing challenge. But it's not for liberal feel-good wussies. Everybody know what they're going to. If you can't move, you're dead. Because nobody's going to help you unless you're really close to the last camp.

Well, no. If I know how to do CPR and I'm nearby when another person goes into cardiac arrest, I know what to do and I know that I have a reasonable chance of keeping the guy alive. It's a one shot deal and only interrupts my "normal" life briefly.

Lobbying the government to do something may or may not get the result I'm hoping for. Others will not necessarily want what I want and may do a better job of selling their point of view. Lobbying for the sorts of things you mention would require ongoing effort, most likely requiring some changes in the way you live for extended time periods.

I'm not necessarily criticizing the climbers who went on with their ascent though I'm not absolving them. There's just a big difference between walking past a specific dying person and essentially ignoring him or her and becoming politically active in hopes of solving problems that impact mortality in situations far removed from you.

First of all, I agree that it's not unreasonable to expect somebody to stop in the middle of a marathon to give CPR, for the reasons you mention. Like I said to the other poster - stopping to help somebody in a marathon is not the same as trying to rescue somebody at high altitude, putting your own life in jeopardy and shelving your one chance at fulfilling your dream that you've invested enormous amounts of time, money and energy into achieving.

What I'm getting at is that every person making a decent living in the First World chooses INDIVIDUALLY between living the "American dream" and being a good humanitarian. Climbers choose between attempting to summit and attempting to rescue another person. In each case, it's a choice between following one's own selfish desires and potentially saving a life/lives.

At the end of the day, I could choose to live in a storage container for dirt cheap, eat only home-prepared food, buy only used clothing and furniture and forgo most electronic devices, unless I needed them for work. I could then donate the bulk of my salary to humanitarian causes that prevent unnecessary deaths. If I were to donate 30K/year, think of how many lives I could save over the course of my life.

Frankly, I have more sympathy for the kid in Africa, who grows up in a slum and has to look after himself from the age of 6 onwards because his parents have both succumbed to AIDS, than I do for a climber, who knowingly put him or herself in a dangerous situation in order to feed his or her egotistical sense of self. I realize of course that it's harder to ignore somebody dieing in front of you than it is to conveniently ignore what's going on thousands of miles away, but I don't think that there's a difference morally speaking.

And well you should!! Go get 'em Teresa!

Are you actually living is a storage shed, eating only home prepared meals, etc. and donating the bulk of your salary to humanitarian causes that prevent unnecessary deaths? If not, why not, if you think that's the way people should live? Even if you can't donate $300,000 annually for this sort of thing, donating $30,000 or even $3,000 would keep a fair few people from dying unnecessarily.

Maybe you're only using computers at the library, but if you're using your own and paying for Net access, the money you're spending on those things could keep a few people from unnecessary deaths.

If you really want to play this thing out, if I'm not mistaken, most expeditions to Everest begin in Nepal. And as you and others have mentioned, they are far from cheap and some, though certainly not all of the money spent on them goes to Nepalese. If "First Worlders" all decided that they were going to skip the Everest climbs and donate the cost to getting a hospital built in Sierra Leone there would be negative consequences for a fair few Nepalese.

Mother Teresa was a wonderful person who did loads of good for more poor people than we can ever count. But her good involved ameliorating their suffering. Her work did very little to lift them out of poverty. Americans who buy running shoes or Tvs that are made in China or Vietnam or Mexico are fulfilling their own desires but in doing so they're also creating jobs (yes, low paying ones that aren't ideal but jobs anyhow) for people who might not have one.

You need to balance altruism and self interest in life.

HRE wrote:

You need to balance altruism and self interest in life.

Well said.

No, I'm not living my life as a perfect humanitarian, nor am I advocating that others do so. My point is that very few people on this planet live completely altruistic lives and, as such, they shouldn't judge climbers too harshly when they put their own self-preservation and goals ahead of helping others.

And here we come to a Letsrun rarity; a two person debate ending in mutual agreement I think. I'm with you on that last line.

Keep in mind also that in most cases, a dying climber at altitude looks little different than a resting climber, and most of the ascentionists are struggling to put one foot in front of the other, with almost complete tunnel vision that makes it difficult to consciously acknowledge the presence of another climber, much less assess their condition in any objective way. If their is any responsibility in most cases, it is that of the guides, who may themselves be overwhelmed by conditions and logistics.

Basically, it is a battlefield in the sky above 7000 meters.

David Sharpe didn't want to spend money on sherpas for guiding. He just paid about 6k to get his stuff lifted to base camp. In contrast, the climbers who passed him had invested heavily in their own security. If people absolutely want to apply daily life moral standards to these climbers David Sharpe was the morally corrupt one who put other people at risk with his irresponsible behavior. But neither he nor the other climbers can be blamed. The moral high ground ends well below 8000 meters.

[quote]HRE wrote:

Mother Teresa was a wonderful person who did loads of good for more poor people than we can ever count. But her good involved ameliorating their suffering. quote]

Well, Christopher Hitchens,and millions of others may disagree.

Have fun with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Missionary_Position

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice is a book by Christopher Hitchens addressing Mother Teresa's life and work. The book presents broad criticism of Mother Teresa and her missionary activity, particularly that she acted as a political opportunist and dogmatist to the detriment of those served by her charities. The book unfolds as an argument that Mother Teresa (born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) does not deserve beatification and elevation to sainthood. Regarding the title's double entendre, Hitchens remarked, "it was either that or Sacred Cow, and I thought Sacred Cow would be in bad taste."[1]

Hitchens primarily condemns Mother Teresa for redirecting contributions to open a global network of convents in place of building the teaching hospital she promised donors. He also makes direct claims that Mother Teresa was no "friend to the poor," and that she opposed structural measures to end poverty, particularly those that would raise the status of women. He argues she was a tool by which the Catholic Church furthered its political and theological aims, and the cult of personality that she developed was used by politicians, dictators and bankers to gain credibility and assuage guilt, citing Hillary Rodham Clinton, Charles Keating and Michèle Bennett as examples.

There's no pleasing everybody.