Mountain Climbing

SkyRider

Banned
Mar 31, 2009
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Any mountain climbers on the Board? Just heard that 4 climbers died trying to scale Mount Everest.

Anybody here ever scaled Everest? (Not I, me afraid of heights.)
 
if i start mountain climbing i will not go higher than 5000 meters. above that is the death zone
 
i climbed blue mountain peak in 1994 which is 2256 meters
 
I think trained climbers now use oxygen.
There are two schools the supplemental oxygen climbers and the without oxygen climbers. At least this week those who died were without oxygen climbers (supplemental oxygen climbers have also died)
 
Bogota, Colombia is about 2500 meters above sea level.
 
Only 14 mountains enter the death zone (have summits higher than 8000 meters/26,247 feet) all are in the Himalayas and neighboring Karakoram range.
 
4 dead in one weekend sounds like a lot. Why do they do it?

A sense of accomplishment I guess. And money to burn. Last time I read, it costs $30,000 to get a license and buy gear. So I'm going to assume the people that do it have lots of money to burn, lots of time to do it, and nothing else really going on in life.

And probably a high ego, knowing that if they die, they will be known as dying trying to climb Mt Everest, as opposed to dying of something boring like old age or disease.
 
4 dead in one weekend sounds like a lot. Why do they do it?

Because climbing Mt Everest is a feat for
heroes only and we know heroes die once and for all.
It takes a coward to die a thousand times before his
death. But cowards are generally smart enough to
realize conquest of the deadly peak has long lost
its novelty.
 
Everest is too dangerous and expensive to climb.

I would go to Tanzania and climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Much safer.
I'm with you, although Kilimanjaro is still well above the danger zone for Altitude Sickness (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema [HAPE] and High Altitude Cerebral Edema [HACE])
 
A sense of accomplishment I guess. And money to burn.
The American physician was I read an experience climber, but I understand one of the real problems of Everest these days are that there are folks climbing who have no business being on a 7000 meter mountain, let alone a mountain over 8000 meters.