What the final hours of a Mount Everest climb are like, as written by a Canadian medical team last year (photographs enlarge nicely if opened in a new window). The month of May is the only safe window for climbing Sagarmatha, and this week Sherpas are desperately trying to get the route prepped. Journal entries from the mountain during the past day show excited teams awaiting the big push:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6. The Discovery film crew got some
nice shots last week, too. The climb is not without immense danger -- about
6 die on the mountain every year, and in 2006
David Sharp died right on the trail, raising a firestorm of debate.
posted by crapmatic
on May 5, 2009 -
56 comments
Paraglider survives 32,000ft fall. A German paragliding champion named
Ewa Wisnierska was "sucked into a storm that pulled her higher than Mount Everest." She "soared skywards," and was soon "covered in ice" as she "battled hailstones the size of oranges," becoming one with the weather. "I could see the Earth coming," she later said, "wow, like
Apollo 13 – I can see the Earth."
posted by BLDGBLOG
on Feb 16, 2007 -
57 comments
"The situation didn't have any intrinsic calm to it," he says, "There was some excited radio communication and the roar of the wind and storm was also very cautionary. I knew it was in the process of killing people out there..."
Dr. Stuart Hutchison, a Canadian cardiologist, was a member of one of three expeditions climbing the
southern route on Mount Everest in early May of 1996. Just after midnight on the morning of May 10, he and 34 other climbers crawled out of
their tents on the South Col and started their
final summit push. After weeks of climbing up and down between camps on the mountain; scaling the treacherous
Khumbu Ice Fall and waliking the
Western Cwm to acclimatize their bodies to the to the
rarefied air at and above 14,000 feet above sea level, everything came down to the next 24 hours.
The day would end with 11 climbers dead on the mountain. Until now Dr. Hutchison has maintained his silence about his role in, and experience of, that tragic day on Everest. [more inside]
posted by persona non grata
on Jul 31, 2006 -
50 comments
A Sad Day. Sometimes it
seems like all the people I admire die before their time. It's a long list:
Dan
Eldon,
Ned Gillette,
Ciriello,
Galen
Rowell,
Alex
Lowe,
Dan
Osman, (plus many others), and now:
Goran
Kropp, died a few days ago. "The Crazy Swede" became famous for
riding a bicycle from Stockholm to Everest, climbing it solo and without oxygen,
and riding back. This story is told in
Ultimate
High:My Everest Odyssey.
posted by ig
on Oct 3, 2002 -
7 comments
Mans with no hands fails to climb Everest. He lost his hands climbing McKinley, which is a sure sign that hands or non-hands you're a crappy climber, pal.
posted by skallas
on Oct 10, 2000 -
7 comments
A 38-year-old Slovenian became the first person ever to ski non-stop down the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, on Saturday. "I feel only absolute happiness and absolute fatigue," Davo Karnicar told Reuters by satellite phone after the descent
posted by Mars Saxman
on Oct 8, 2000 -
10 comments
