SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Mallory and Irvine: Should we solve Everest's mystery?

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeonSamurai (Post 1760684)

You have any idea how dangerous Everest is? It is literally a giant open graveyard littered with well over a hundred corpses of dead climbers in the death zone. There is one area called rainbow valley because of all the people who fell in there, making the place rainbow colored from the different colored snow suits they are wearing. To reach the summit you literally have to climb over the dead (or even dying sometimes) to do it.

Nova: Everest the Death Zone
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...82149157525822

http://gizmodo.com/5755875/abandoned-on-mt-everest

http://godheadv.blogspot.com/2010/04...n-everest.html

Now they have tried some expeditions to clean up a bit, like the one last year. But it is very difficult and extremely dangerous. It is hard enough just reaching the peak and surviving, let alone trying to clean up. If you can't go on and your in the death zone, you are dead.. as no one can help you (or they will die with you).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...ath-zone-clean

Yes, I know all of this.

Given the risk involved with climbing such a mountain, merely for personal gain, I find it a very selfish thing to do. Each of those who died left behind friends and family, not all of whom would be happy about their friend/loved one risking their death.
Those who do are not thinking of others, just themselves. That's my take on dangerous mountaineering, and that of many climbers who have lost friends over the years - surviving to be old enough to see how selfish they actually were. Some of the accounts by climbers themselves say this, quite directly in some cases.
The cliché of the personality clash on the mountain is quite true in many instances; some deaths are no doubt attributable to this - bad decisions made by ambitious people, you know how it goes.

I wouldn't advocate stopping them doing it however.
But it would be nice to not leave so much flotsam behind, both material and human, particularly for such an arbitrary goal.