Highest Strangeness: Everest Oddities, Excesses & Risks

[Ghost In The Machine]

Been compulsively watching docs about Everest (not The Titanic, this time) and wondering what everyone else thinks.

So, did Mallory and Irvine summit?

I've been gripped by this story for decades.

Were the bodies/a body first found by the Chinese in 1960/1975? And what about the camera? Was it on Irvine, or Mallory and is it still on the mountain or are the rumours true that it was... removed? And what points to them being on the descent not the ascent? How much proof would be needed to say, unequivocally, that Tenzing and Hillary weren't there first? Enquiring mind wants to know what others think.

 

[Steven]

Sadly, I don't believe they made it. I want to believe it though.

Have you read Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest? An absolutely brilliant book.

'The price of life is death'

For George Mallory, as for all of his generation, death was but 'a frail barrier that men crossed, smiling and gallant, every day'. As climbers they accepted a degree of risk unimaginable before the war. What mattered now was how one lived, and the moments of being alive.

While the quest for Mount Everest may have begun as a grand imperial gesture, it ended as a mission of revival for a country and a lost generation bled white by war. In a monumental work of history and adventure, Wade Davis asks not whether George Mallory was the first to reach the summit of Everest, but rather why he kept climbing on that fateful day.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-Silence-Mallory-Conquest-Everest/dp/0099563835

Review: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/25/into-silence-wade-davis-review

 

[Tunn11]

Been compulsively watching docs about Everest (not The Titanic, this time) and wondering what everyone else thinks.

So, did Mallory and Irvine summit?

I've been gripped by this story for decades.

Were the bodies/a body first found by the Chinese in 1960/1975? And what about the camera? Was it on Irvine, or Mallory and is it still on the mountain or are the rumours true that it was... removed? And what points to them being on the descent not the ascent? How much proof would be needed to say, unequivocally, that Tenzing and Hillary weren't there first? Enquiring mind wants to know what others think.

I think finding Irvine's camera with a picture of one or both of them clearly at the summit would probably be the only proof that we be universally accepted. Might still happen.

And, of course there is a conspiracy theory that the Chinese are covering up the find!

https://petapixel.com/2022/05/16/ch...p-photo-evidence-of-the-first-everest-ascent/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Third-Pole-Mystery-Obsession-Everest/dp/1472273664

 

[Druk]

Apocryphal Chinese whispers,odds are they didn’t make it to the top.

 

[Druk]

Nirmal Purja, an ex-Gurkha & ex-Marine has managed to ascend to the summit of the world's 14 highest mountains in just over 6 months, breaking the record by around 7 years. Apparently he climbed Everest, Lhotse and Makalu in five days, but it could have been fewer - had he not stopped for two nights "to have a drink" :boozing:

From the BBC yesterday: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50217376

"A Nepali mountaineer and former British Marine has climbed the world's tallest 14 peaks in six months - beating an earlier record of almost eight years.

Nirmal Purja reached the top of his 14th mountain, Shishapangma in China, on Tuesday morning.

Purja, 36, joined the British Army in 2003 and became a Royal Marine in 2009."

SBS,the first Gurkha to be badged.

 

[AnonyJ]

I thought you chaps might like to hear about a gentleman who works as a climbing guide and Sherpa/Sirdar, he was a notable survivor of the May 11th 1996 blizzard incident (The 2015 movie Everest was partly based on those events). Ang Dorje Sherpa's coming up to 50 years old, and now lives most of the time with his American wife & two children in the USA (they met at EBC in 2002) he works as a wind turbine mechanic over there.

He's also climbed Everest 20 times between 1992 and 2019 and, to quote Wikipedia: "He returns to climb Everest each spring, in part to be able to visit family as he passes on the way to the mountain. He completed his 19th summit of Everest in 2017"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ang_Dorje_Sherpa

I can just imagine the family conversation when he pitches up at Auntie's gaff:

'Did you have a nice trip, nephew?'
'Oh yes, I called in to see Mum and Dad on my way back from the top of Everest, they send their love!'

Since I wrote this he's been up & down the biggest hill twice more (22 times in total) and he's coming up to 54 years of age

http://www.adventureconsultants.com/about-us/guides/ang-dorjee-sherpa/

 

[AnonyJ]

Been compulsively watching docs about Everest (not The Titanic, this time) and wondering what everyone else thinks.

So, did Mallory and Irvine summit?

I've been gripped by this story for decades.

Were the bodies/a body first found by the Chinese in 1960/1975? And what about the camera? Was it on Irvine, or Mallory and is it still on the mountain or are the rumours true that it was... removed? And what points to them being on the descent not the ascent? How much proof would be needed to say, unequivocally, that Tenzing and Hillary weren't there first? Enquiring mind wants to know what others think.

Norgay and Hillary never revealed which of them set foot on the summit first - I like to think it was Tenzing Norgay - a Nepalese citizen making the ascent from the Nepal side of the border.

I don't think Mallory & Irvine made it - although Mallory's body was eventually uncovered from the ice, the glaciers and ice falls and avalanches move everything on the mountain around for great distances sometimes. I think the main reason people *wish* it were they is because they were probably the last great example of old-style gentleman explorers in real life - with all of the 'Empire, Old Blighty and Spiffing Larks' undertones.

Hillary's expedition succeeded (IMO) ultimately because he took the best advice and training from the local climbers and guides.

I think finding Irvine's camera with a picture of one or both of them clearly at the summit would probably be the only proof that we be universally accepted. Might still happen.

And, of course there is a conspiracy theory that the Chinese are covering up the find!

https://petapixel.com/2022/05/16/ch...p-photo-evidence-of-the-first-everest-ascent/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Third-Pole-Mystery-Obsession-Everest/dp/1472273664

Just wondering why the Chinese PTB would do this - cui bono? After all, IIRC Mallory & Irvine's team ascended from the Tibetan side of the mountain so if they had made it (decades before Hillary & Norgay) wouldn't that be a nice advertisement of China doing something better than those bad old Empire capitalists colonials climbing it from the Nepalese side?

A bit of a long reach IMO

 

[Steven]

I think the main reason people *wish* it were they is because they were probably the last great example of old-style gentleman explorers in real life - with all of the 'Empire, Old Blighty and Spiffing Larks' undertones.

For me, it's the sheer bravery. Judging by all I've read on the subject, Mallory knew that he was likely going to his death. Just as with Scott, their personal flaws seem trivial in comparison with the courage...even if that courage is sometimes 'merely' their endurance or stoicism.

* I now appear to be writing your posts for you, due to my quoting ineptitude. Damn...

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

Just got that

Sadly, I don't believe they made it. I want to believe it though.

Have you read Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest? An absolutely brilliant book.

'The price of life is death'

For George Mallory, as for all of his generation, death was but 'a frail barrier that men crossed, smiling and gallant, every day'. As climbers they accepted a degree of risk unimaginable before the war. What mattered now was how one lived, and the moments of being alive.

While the quest for Mount Everest may have begun as a grand imperial gesture, it ended as a mission of revival for a country and a lost generation bled white by war. In a monumental work of history and adventure, Wade Davis asks not whether George Mallory was the first to reach the summit of Everest, but rather why he kept climbing on that fateful day.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-Silence-Mallory-Conquest-Everest/dp/0099563835

Review: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/25/into-silence-wade-davis-review

Just got that book on Audible, so glad to hear it's good.

As for reaching the top - goggles in pocket suggest a too-late (?) descent but dying on the way down doesn't mean they summitted, I guess? That said, I saw a YT video that said that statistically if you turn back before summitting, you're less likely to die, however high you got?

Also, wife's photo not found on him as folks here will of course, know. But there is the possibility Mallory, not Irving, was the "British" climber the Chinese possibly found before - and so camera (if on Mallory) and photo could have been removed? Also, having watched a bit about the finding of the body, I'm not convinced the body was thoroughly searched, although those who found it said it was. It would be an impossible task to be entirely sure if he was frozen into the snow, possibly?

Re Hillary, I like to imagine it was Norgay who first stepped foot on the summit and if it wasn't, it should have been. I think that successful outcome was the same sort of level of jingoism that a 1924 success would have provoked, but I'd like it to have been Mallory because I've always found him a sympathetic character to read about and I like the thought it was done a couple decades before it was supposedly done...

Jury is out, for me, on whether the Chinese found Irving/the camera.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

Norgay and Hillary never revealed which of them set foot on the summit first - I like to think it was Tenzing Norgay - a Nepalese citizen making the ascent from the Nepal side of the border.

I don't think Mallory & Irvine made it - although Mallory's body was eventually uncovered from the ice, the glaciers and ice falls and avalanches move everything on the mountain around for great distances sometimes. I think the main reason people *wish* it were they is because they were probably the last great example of old-style gentleman explorers in real life - with all of the 'Empire, Old Blighty and Spiffing Larks' undertones.

Hillary's expedition succeeded (IMO) ultimately because he took the best advice and training from the local climbers and guides.



Just wondering why the Chinese PTB would do this - cui bono? After all, IIRC Mallory & Irvine's team ascended from the Tibetan side of the mountain so if they had made it (decades before Hillary & Norgay) wouldn't that be a nice advertisement of China doing something better than those bad old Empire capitalists colonials climbing it from the Nepalese side?

A bit of a long reach IMO

Just Googled because I couldn't remember the dates. It seems the Chinese didn't summit til 1960. IIRC it was either a 1965 or 1970's Chinese expedition that had a member say he's seen "English dead". But the man who saw it, died himself the next day,(in an avalanche?) before anyone could be told any more detail. But Mallory and Irvine were the only pre-War English dead on the mountain, I think?

So the theory goes, that if an English dead could be later found and kicked down a crevasse or something (as might have happened to Irvine) or evidence removed from the body (camera), then the Chinese 1960 summiting would mean the glory would never go to the English.

 

[Kondoru]

No, Maurice Wilson was there.

 

[ramonmercado]

The place smells to high heaven.

People climbing Mount Everest will now have to clear up their own poo and bring it back to base camp to be disposed of, authorities have said.

"Our mountains have begun to stink," Mingma Sherpa, chairman of Pasang Lhamu rural municipality, told the BBC.

The municipality, which covers most of the Everest region, has introduced the new rule as part of wider measures being implemented.
Due to extreme temperatures, excrement left on Everest does not fully degrade.

"We are getting complaints that human stools are visible on rocks and some climbers are falling sick. This is not acceptable and erodes our image," Mr Mingma adds.

Climbers attempting Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak, and nearby Mount Lhotse will be ordered to buy so-called poo bags at base camp, which will be "checked upon their return".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68237123

 

[ramonmercado]

Yak Attack!

A British hiker was left severely injured by a yak while hiking Mount Everest – but still returned to the peak to carry out the promise she had made her late mother.

Charity fundraiser Emma Keen was airlifted to hospital after the beast’s horns stabbed her through the leg, leaving her with a three-inch gash.

She had been climbing the mountain to raise money for the charity that had helped her late mother, who had polycystic injuries and desperately needed a kidney transplant.

Emma, a manager from Bridgend, told Wales Online: ‘I was speaking to my brother and his wife and their son Bobi showing them the yak on FaceTime. I was around two metres away from him.

‘Without warning I could hear the hoofs pounding towards me, a sharp stabbing pain in the top of my leg. It threw me up in the air around a metre and I landed back down with a thud.

‘Clutching my upper leg I looked and the yak was dragging its hoof in the dusty ground ready to go at me for a second time with his horns down.

‘I screamed and managed to raise my leg and shout. With that I got up and [fellow team member] Lloyd went for help. I was then airlifted to hospital where the medical staff cleaned my wound and stitched me up.’

When the medical team arrived, Emma was bleeding heavily and drifting in and out of consciousness.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/25/brit...r-mount-everest-20525893/?ico=more_text_links

 

[Druk]

Yak Attack!

A British hiker was left severely injured by a yak while hiking Mount Everest – but still returned to the peak to carry out the promise she had made her late mother.

Charity fundraiser Emma Keen was airlifted to hospital after the beast’s horns stabbed her through the leg, leaving her with a three-inch gash.

She had been climbing the mountain to raise money for the charity that had helped her late mother, who had polycystic injuries and desperately needed a kidney transplant.

Emma, a manager from Bridgend, told Wales Online: ‘I was speaking to my brother and his wife and their son Bobi showing them the yak on FaceTime. I was around two metres away from him.

‘Without warning I could hear the hoofs pounding towards me, a sharp stabbing pain in the top of my leg. It threw me up in the air around a metre and I landed back down with a thud.

‘Clutching my upper leg I looked and the yak was dragging its hoof in the dusty ground ready to go at me for a second time with his horns down.

‘I screamed and managed to raise my leg and shout. With that I got up and [fellow team member] Lloyd went for help. I was then airlifted to hospital where the medical staff cleaned my wound and stitched me up.’

When the medical team arrived, Emma was bleeding heavily and drifting in and out of consciousness.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/25/brit...r-mount-everest-20525893/?ico=more_text_links

Two meters from a yak if your not used to them or a herder is asking for trouble.

 

[AnonyJ]

A Nepalese government-sponsored team has managed to retrieve five bodies from the 'death zone' on mt. Everest (Sagarmartha). The BBC has an long article about the operation https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9r31g50xqdo :

"..Many people cannot afford to retrieve the bodies of relatives who have died on mountains in Nepal. Even if they have the financial means, most private companies refuse to help get bodies from the death zone because it is too dangerous.

The military allocated five million rupees ($37,400; £29,000) this year to retrieve each body. Twelve people are needed to lower a body from 8,000m, with each needing four cylinders of oxygen. One cylinder costs more than $400, meaning that $20,000 is needed for oxygen alone.

Every year, there is only about a 15-day window during which climbers can ascend and descend from 8,000 metres, as the winds slow down during the transition between wind cycles. In the death zone, the wind speed often exceeds 100 km per hour..."

Photo from Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa

"..The four bodies and the skeleton have been kept at a hospital in Kathmandu.

The army has found identification documents on two bodies – Czech climber Milan Sedlacek and American mountaineer Ronald Yearwood, who died in 2017. The Nepali government will be in communication with the respective embassies.

The process of identifying the other two bodies is ongoing.

Sherpa climbers and guides keep track of the locations and possible identities of lost climbers, so they have provided potential information on some of the bodies. They believe all the bodies belong to foreigners, but the government has not confirmed this.

About 100 sherpas have died on the Himalayas since records began, so many families have been waiting for years to perform the last Buddhist rites for their loved ones.

Authorities have said they will bury the bodies if no one comes to claim them three months after identification – regardless of whether the bodies belong to a foreigner or a Nepali.

Mr Sherpa first climbed in the Himalayas at the age of 20. In his career, he has scaled Everest three times and Lhotse five times.

“Mountaineers have got famous from climbing. The Himalayas have given us so many opportunities,” he says.

“By doing this special job of retrieving dead bodies, it’s my time to pay back to the Great Himalayas.”

 

[SimonBurchell]

A Nepalese government-sponsored team has managed to retrieve five bodies from the 'death zone' on mt. Everest (Sagarmartha). The BBC has an long article about the operation https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9r31g50xqdo :

"..Many people cannot afford to retrieve the bodies of relatives who have died on mountains in Nepal. Even if they have the financial means, most private companies refuse to help get bodies from the death zone because it is too dangerous.

The military allocated five million rupees ($37,400; £29,000) this year to retrieve each body. Twelve people are needed to lower a body from 8,000m, with each needing four cylinders of oxygen. One cylinder costs more than $400, meaning that $20,000 is needed for oxygen alone.

Every year, there is only about a 15-day window during which climbers can ascend and descend from 8,000 metres, as the winds slow down during the transition between wind cycles. In the death zone, the wind speed often exceeds 100 km per hour..."

View attachment 79811

Photo from Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa

"..The four bodies and the skeleton have been kept at a hospital in Kathmandu.

The army has found identification documents on two bodies – Czech climber Milan Sedlacek and American mountaineer Ronald Yearwood, who died in 2017. The Nepali government will be in communication with the respective embassies.

The process of identifying the other two bodies is ongoing.

Sherpa climbers and guides keep track of the locations and possible identities of lost climbers, so they have provided potential information on some of the bodies. They believe all the bodies belong to foreigners, but the government has not confirmed this.

About 100 sherpas have died on the Himalayas since records began, so many families have been waiting for years to perform the last Buddhist rites for their loved ones.

Authorities have said they will bury the bodies if no one comes to claim them three months after identification – regardless of whether the bodies belong to a foreigner or a Nepali.

Mr Sherpa first climbed in the Himalayas at the age of 20. In his career, he has scaled Everest three times and Lhotse five times.

“Mountaineers have got famous from climbing. The Himalayas have given us so many opportunities,” he says.

“By doing this special job of retrieving dead bodies, it’s my time to pay back to the Great Himalayas.”

"Nepal has received a bad name for the garbage and dead bodies which have polluted the Himalayas on a grave scale".

Ho ho ho.

 

[Mythopoeika]

A Nepalese government-sponsored team has managed to retrieve five bodies from the 'death zone' on mt. Everest (Sagarmartha). The BBC has an long article about the operation https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9r31g50xqdo :

"..Many people cannot afford to retrieve the bodies of relatives who have died on mountains in Nepal. Even if they have the financial means, most private companies refuse to help get bodies from the death zone because it is too dangerous.

The military allocated five million rupees ($37,400; £29,000) this year to retrieve each body. Twelve people are needed to lower a body from 8,000m, with each needing four cylinders of oxygen. One cylinder costs more than $400, meaning that $20,000 is needed for oxygen alone.

Every year, there is only about a 15-day window during which climbers can ascend and descend from 8,000 metres, as the winds slow down during the transition between wind cycles. In the death zone, the wind speed often exceeds 100 km per hour..."

View attachment 79811

Photo from Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa

"..The four bodies and the skeleton have been kept at a hospital in Kathmandu.

The army has found identification documents on two bodies – Czech climber Milan Sedlacek and American mountaineer Ronald Yearwood, who died in 2017. The Nepali government will be in communication with the respective embassies.

The process of identifying the other two bodies is ongoing.

Sherpa climbers and guides keep track of the locations and possible identities of lost climbers, so they have provided potential information on some of the bodies. They believe all the bodies belong to foreigners, but the government has not confirmed this.

About 100 sherpas have died on the Himalayas since records began, so many families have been waiting for years to perform the last Buddhist rites for their loved ones.

Authorities have said they will bury the bodies if no one comes to claim them three months after identification – regardless of whether the bodies belong to a foreigner or a Nepali.

Mr Sherpa first climbed in the Himalayas at the age of 20. In his career, he has scaled Everest three times and Lhotse five times.

“Mountaineers have got famous from climbing. The Himalayas have given us so many opportunities,” he says.

“By doing this special job of retrieving dead bodies, it’s my time to pay back to the Great Himalayas.”

Full respect to those guys.