Fatalities At Everest

“Yeah I heard about that:( Its really sad.”

“For someone who lives in Heaven, Zeb, you sure sound cold and heartless.”

“Insensitive troll, Buddur...

Not worth paying attention to”

“sort of befitting though given the history of that peak...

still, it's very sad for the families... :(”

“Deaths on Everest are not without honor, IMO.”

“This is very sad. Both were members of the Sherpa community, one was a guide. I wonder if it was one of the ones that guide for hikers and backpackers? Either way, it is a tragedy.”

“You just can't trust those Russian choppers and planes...especially the old ones.

Just a few weeks ago, a Russian cargo plane's rear door unhatched...and a whole bunch of people got sucked out at 12,000 feet or something. Somewhere in the Congo, I think.”

“There was a lot of conflicting news about that Congo thing...Some reports said everyone on board except the crew died, others (govt. reports) said none died, others said low numbers, like 12, died. We'll probably never hear the whole truth on that one.”

“I read one report that said alot of those that died were soldiers...I guess the govt can cover it up, by saying those guys/gals died in an ambush in the forest or something.”

“The report I read was that it was soldiers and their families being relocated to another base. Not good.”

“(AP) A 63-year-old Japanese woman died while descending Mount Everest after making it to the top of the world's highest mountain, her tour guide company said Friday.

The woman, Shoko Ota, had made it to the summit with a guide and a fellow climber Thursday, Tokyo-based Adventure Guides Co. said in a statement.

But Ota became unable to move and lost consciousness during their descent, about 1,100 feet from the summit of the 29,000-foot mountain.

The team's leader, Kenji Kondo, later confirmed that Ota had stopped breathing and lost her pulse. Kondo, who is also the president of Adventure Guides, reported the death by satellite phone to the company's Tokyo office.

Ota had previously climbed Mount Cho-Oyu, a 26,900-foot-high peak in the Himalayas, with Adventure Guides in October 2002. Kyodo News reported she started mountain climbing in her 40s.



Another one who started climbing at the same age I was getting too old for it.”

“the guides should have seen her failing and turned her around.”

“Endurance is a big issue. Hubby and I would ride our motorcycles for long distances, and we would always make sure we didn't go so far or so late in the day that we didn't have enough endurance to ride back. The same thing applies. On your return ride, you need to be alert.

You don't have to go to Mt. Everest to die. A man just died on Mt. Rainier. He fell only 30 feet, but hit his head when he landed. He died in the helicopter when he was being airlifted out.”

“*scratching my head*

Did lipstick hiker really try to compare endurance of climbing Mt. Everest with "endurance" of motorcycle riding?

And gee whiz...everyone knows you can die anywhere. Maybe I'm dense, but I'm not getting the reference. ...and the point is?”

“When Edmund Hillary was asked what he thought about Mallory possibly beating him to the summit of Everest (1924 vs 1953) by 29 years.

Ed replied "Don't you think the trip back is kind of important too ?"”

“I think lipstick was just making a point that you have to plan to get home too.

Getting there is pointless if you can't get back to tell about it, just ask Mallory, or Shackelton too for that matter.”

“Shackleton got back.

Perhaps you were thinking of Robert F. Scott.

It was interesting to read that Shackleton was with an earlier Scott expedition to Antartica but Scott fired him because he did not like his manner with the men.

Scott could not make the decision to abandon Oates who was slowing his party down. In the end Oates committed suicide to give the rest of the team a chance but it was too late and they all died, 11 miles from a supply depot.”

“I agree completely with LH. What's not to understand, ski? When I eat donuts, I always make sure there is milk nearby, just in case. It's the same on Mt. Everest.”

“ski, by comparing dying on Mt. Everest to dying on Mt. Rainier, I meant that Rainier has all the same pitfalls as Everest without the elevation.

Endurance is endurance not matter what you are doing. With biking, there is also body & mind fatigue as with climbing.”

“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12953241/


Everest pioneer rips those who left dying man.
Hillary shocked that mountaineers ignored man as they attempted summit
Life and death on Everest
May 23: A double amputee and his team were among forty climbers who walked past a British man dying on Mount Everest.
Updated: 10:57 a.m. CT May 24, 2006
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Mount Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary said Wednesday he was shocked that dozens of climbers left a British mountaineer to die during their own attempts on the world’s tallest peak.

David Sharp, 34, died apparently of oxygen deficiency while descending from the summit during a solo climb last week.

More than 40 climbers are thought to have seen him as he lay dying, and almost all continued to the summit without offering assistance.

“Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain,” Hillary, 87, was quoted as saying in an interview with New Zealand Press Association.

New Zealander Mark Inglis, who became the first double amputee to reach the mountain’s summit on prosthetic legs, told Television New Zealand that his party stopped during its May 15 summit push and found Sharp close to death.

A member of the party tried to give Sharp oxygen, and sent out a radio distress call before continuing to the summit, he said.

Several parties reported seeing Sharp in varying states of health and working on his oxygen equipment on the day of his death.

Inglis, who was due to arrive back in New Zealand on Thursday, said Sharp had no oxygen when he was found. He said there was virtually no hope that Sharp could have been carried to safety from his position about 1,000 feet short of the 29,035-foot summit, inside the low-oxygen “death zone” of the mountain straddling the Nepal-China border.


His own party was able to render only limited assistance and had to put the safety of its own members first, Inglis said Wednesday.

“I walked past David but only because there were far more experienced and effective people than myself to help him,” Inglis said. “It was a phenomenally extreme environment; it was an incredibly cold day.”

The temperature was minus 100 at 7 a.m. on the summit, he said.

Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953 became the first mountaineers to reach Everest’s summit. Hillary said in an interview published Wednesday in a New Zealand newspaper that some climbers today did not care about the welfare of others.

“There have been a number of occasions when people have been neglected and left to die and I don’t regard this as a correct philosophy,” he told the Otago Daily Times.

“I think the whole attitude toward climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top,” he told the newspaper.


Hillary told New Zealand Press Association he would have abandoned his own pioneering climb to save another’s life.

“It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say ‘good morning’ and pass on by,” he said.

He said that his expedition, “would never for a moment have left one of the members or a group of members just lie there and die while they plugged on towards the summit.”

Three climbers, from Brazil, Russia and France, died descending Everest in separate expeditions in the past week, a Chinese official said Tuesday.

More than 1,500 climbers have reached the summit of Mount Everest in the last 53 years and some 190 have died trying.”

“190 DEAD, WHEN ARE WE GOING TO STOP THIS USELESS WASTE OF LIFE> I tell you this is another example of Western Hegemony...WHEN ARE WE GOING TO PULL OUR PEOPLE OUT OF THIS PLACE (LOL)”

“I heard that a guy with no legs (I think using prostetics) climbed Everest recently in 40 days.

In WA, we just lost a 62 year old hiker. They say he slipped off a slippery boulder, but he was off trail. This stuff happens every year. Next come the water fatalities as people enter rivers and oceans and lakes and drown. Usually, someone goes in to save them and drowns with them. It's so sad to know this will happen every single year.”

“I think too many people are unwilling to help b/c scrapping their trip would be too costly for them, in time and money.

i think they should never climb it, IMHO.”

“This guy was solo climbing Everest. He made his choice.”

“I wouold go if the opportunity ever came up, I would hope someone would help me if something befalls me, jsut as I would stop my trip to help someone else.”

“Don't climb Everest then. It used to be that the rule was you didn't have to summit, but you did have to come back down. Lately, it seems more people are willing to die as long as they can reach the summit.”

“I know someone who was taken on an extravagent trip to Hawaii by an older man who had no one to go with, paid all her expenses, then they had to bring the plane down on their way home because he got ill. Well...the woman he took left the old guy in a strange state in a hospital by himself and continued on with her flight home. She didn't even have to rush home either. Some people are just cold.

In WA, most people fall and die instantly on hikes. There's no helping them or they snow ski off bounds and end up face/head down, buried in the snow where they are by themselves so no one can help them. They are called idiots.”

“No socialism on the mountain!!!! - why should other people give up their hard earn money spent on this trip to stop someone else dying - sorry, tad Fuego in reponding to earlier posts.

I can't believe these people. You don't just leave people to die to fulfull your own selfish goals.”

“Has he been eaten?
last edited: 5/24/06 3:42:51 PM”

“You don't think its selfish to solo climb everest without enough oxygen and expect others to rescue you?”

“Ya can't check your humanity at basecamp.”

“In WA, most people fall and die instantly on hikes.
lipstick hiker
4:40:32 PM
5/24/06

I'm never hiking in Washington!

Judging the dying, hyway? No thank you. if I saw a Touron in need of help and way out of there league, I would help.”

“that's crazy...everest has become to "touristy"...everybody wants to do it now and is only limited by money, if you have enough you can climb it regardless of your abilities or motivation...something needs to change before it becomes disney land”

“Sad story. It's hard to make judgements without being there, but it does seem a bit crass to leave a dying person for your own moment of glory.

I wonder if he was dead by the time they came down?”

“Sure it can be questioned if he should have been there, and whether everest should be like it is now, but walking past someone who is dying is something else altogether.

We don't have to go backpacking and yet occasionally people who do need rescuing. Should people just be left out there?”

“bear, WA fatalities are from people using poor judgement. Sure, I've walked over snow banks where if I didn't have good footing, I could fall into the mountains abyss or slip on a log over a rushing river to be swept away and never be seen again, but to go where it's not intended for people to go or to do sports without the proper gear, you're asking for trouble. Yeah, accidents happen, but most are self-inflicted.

Last year a guy walked into the river to retrieve his kids sneaker. Good-bye, he got swept away. I know kids have expensive sneakers these days, but was it worth his life?

Just last week, a gal went hiking, I don't know if she got lost and fell, but no one really knew where she went, she was alone and had no extra clothes or food. She was saved after being missing for 3 days in the Olymics of WA. She was lucky the temps have been a bit higher where she didn't get hypothermia and die. She was real lucky!”

“We don't have to go backpacking and yet occasionally people who do need rescuing. Should people just be left out there?”
Y2
5:01:44 PM
5/24/06

Apparently


LH - It was maybe a poor attempt at humor. the wording of your post implied "if you fall then you will die"”

“I am amused by all these peeps who are so certain that they would have done something and are comparing climbing Everest to backpacking. From what I have read, at that altitude (I believe they were 1000' from the summit) you are practically the walking dead just by yourself. Unless you are as experienced as one of the guides then its unlikely you could have rescued him anyway. And if one of the guides elected to help then he would have to turn around his whole team to help someone who chose to do something stupid (probably against teh advice of every guide on that mountain).”

“Edmund Hillary blames climbers for Everest death

Updated: 10:10 p.m. ET May 23, 2006

WELLINGTON - Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, has blamed the commercialisation of climbing the world's highest mountain for the death a British climber, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

"The people just want to get to the top. They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress."

"It simply would not have happened. If you have someone who is in great need and you are still strong and energetic then you have a duty really to give all you can to get the man down and getting to the summit becomes secondary."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12942699/from/RL.2/

Yes, it is the same as backpacking. Or the same as seeing someone drowning, or in a fire.

You don't question why they are dying, you help. At least, if you're human.
last edited: 5/24/06 5:54:08 PM”

“In May of 1996 Rob Hall died to help one of his climbers who couldn't make it down. That was Hall's choice, but because of it it can be argued that others died because of his choice. He was the guide, it was his responsibility to get all of them down. Maybe if he had left the one he could have saved the others?

And Backpacking is not the same as climbing everest. I have never felt that one wrong move backpacking would kill me.”

“

Those unable to walk in the death zone—the area above 7,600 meters (25,000 feet) where climbers breathe only one-third of the atmospheric oxygen found at sea level—have traditionally been considered beyond help. But the miraculous recovery of Texas pathologist Beck Weathers in 1996 called this notion into question.

The unconscious Weathers was left for dead on the South Col during the brutal storm of the well-publicized Mountain Everest climbing season of 1996.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0425_030425_darkeverest.html

Your example, hyway, shows the difficulty. Doesn't mean he shouldn't have done what he did.

I would not go with a group that would leave one behind to save the rest.

I do not agree with that type of mindset under any conditions. Or the same type of mindset that allowed more than 40 people to ignore a dying Human. That so many did is what makes this story so horrible.”

“It's not about climbing or backpacking..It's about helping another human.

I think there is something VERY WRONG about leaving anyone behind no matter how they got into trouble.”

“Okay, the Everest story. It's everyone man and woman for themselves when you climb Everest. Haven't any of you seen that Everest movie? Really, you can only help a person so much before you endanger your own life, and as the article said, the man could not be brought to an elevation where there was oxygen. He chose to go that non-oxygen route and took his own life. What can you do?

And then he's climbing solo? So he's trying to make or break some record at the expense of losing his life. His choice. It's too bad he didn't make it, but I can't say I feel bad for him, putting himself in harms way w/no oxygen and climbing solo. He did set a record, but not the one he wanted. He became the ......(fill in the number) to die on Mt. Everest.

I think the only person that is responsible for helping you is your guide if you use one, but even then, if you can't climb anymore and are fatigued, you're screwed.

Bear, well it kind of is like that in WA. Most people who fall die. Most hikes in my state are at a high elevation and many with nothing to hang onto on your way down if you do slip and fall. Then there are the people who fall on Mt. Rainier while climbing. They're pretty much done too. It's sad to see people out enjoying themselves and have it end up in a tragedy, especially ones that could have been circumvented.”

“I do not agree with that type of mindset under any conditions. Or the same type of mindset that allowed more than 40 people to ignore a dying Human. That so many did is what makes this story so horrible.”
bearmagnet
7:23:48 PM
5/24/06

I don't want to be around that kind of mindset either, but from everything I have read, it is the excepted mindset of Everest Climbers. Thats why, even if I wasn't fat, out of shape, and clumsy, I wouldn't be climbing Everest.

There is a part of the book "The Climb" where Anatoli Boukreev talks about the changing mindset of todays climbers. He describes himself as a sport climber. He climbs for the sport of it. If he doesn't reach the summit this attempt, so what, he'll get another one or this one later. The important thing was to stay alive to climb again. His complaint was that he discovered, while training the Indonesian everest expedition team, that for today's climbers it is Everest itself that is the goal, not the climb. That obtaining the summit is worth giving your life for. The Indonesians would have given 100% of all they had to get to the summit and die there happy to be the first Indonesions to achieve it.

That is what is driving Everest climbers today. They all know that for every 4 succesful summits, there has been a death. It seems that since they have excepted the fact that the attempt might kill them, that when they find someone whose luck has run out that it is just the draw of the cards for that person. They rolled the dice and lost, but your roll hasn't stopped yet.
last edited: 5/24/06 7:09:24 PM”

“Fair enough. Everest is full of poor examples of humans and I'll stay away.”

“A few years ago we developed a line to express when a sport became one for the masses, or jumped the shark. We called it "Dewed"

Once you saw a sport on a Mountain Dew commercial, it was over...it became Dewed.

I realized how bad it got when Mountain Dew did a commercial with ice climbers. A year later Martha Stewart was doing it. It became a big fad.

Mountaineering use to be a sport that you dedicated your life to. When Amy asked me to train her for mountaineering she asked how long it would take ...I told her I could teach her how to rock climb in a week, I could teach her how to ice climb in two weeks, but mountaineering would take 5 to 10 years.


Now folks get guided up a couple mountains than hire someone to drag their ass's up Everest.

I've seen the same thing happen to telemarking/backcountry skiing. Folks take lessons, buy the latest gear and look down their noses at those in leather boots. It's become a status symbol. If you don't have the new, cool, color coordinated gear you somehow don't belong out there. It doesn't matter if it's their first year and your 30th, they have the class.

Rock climbers matching their quick draw colors to their biners so they "look cool".

Those who walked by that man aren't real climbers as far as I'm concerned, they are #&%!$ing tourists.

It's all been Dewed, dude.
last edited: 5/24/06 7:31:12 PM”

“we talked about this a couple years back I think. It's an unwritten rule that even though you climb Everest with a group, you are basically on your own. They say it's a death sentence for the healthy person who would want to help the person that's ill/left behind.

Yes, I can see why that would be, and it's probably THE reason why I will never climb Everest. Well, this and I don't have $10,000.

I don't think I could leave a injured person behind. That must be incredible difficult.”

“"It's an unwritten rule that even though you climb Everest with a group, you are basically on your own"

I have to disagree with that. Every mountaineering team I have ever known looks out for its own. They also rescue those that may need it over their attempt to the summit. Times have changed, but thats how it use to be.”

“What an awful way to die... alone and uncared for with people all around you full of apathy, too busy with their own needs to care. It probably happens all the time when you think about it.

I can only say what I think I would have done. I could live with myself having not "climbed" that rock, but I could not live with myself passing up a 34 year man dying alone in agony. However futile I would have at least tried and done anything I could to ease his suffering in his final hours. Saying he was "beyond hope" is simply deplorable and even sitting with him during his final hours would merit my stopping a summit attempt.

What a sad story. Someone said to me once that the world would be a better place if we felt the lost of a stranger as deeply as we felt the loss of a loved one. This story makes me think of that.”