2024 LC Thread

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I don’t think the one that was clipped to the legendary Sherpa was the instagram model. The instagram model died first, then the older woman who had hired the legendary Sherpa insisted on continuing when the second avalanche took them

The craziest part to me is how they both wound up pushing for the summit at almost the exact same time.

Also being whisked up the mountain by a big team of porters and guides is pretty lame. Might as well just build a big ski lift. I’m not impressed with any of these records that involve one climber and 10 support staff.

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Ugh, Gaiman news is a gut punch.

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you’re right, i just now finished it.

also watched a handful of yt videos on everest. couple edited go-pro videos of the last 5-6 hour climb to the summit with commentary. i can see how people get addicted to mountaineering. it’s a physical challenge, which i like. pushing yourself to the top and getting there has to be a pretty great, lasting feeling.

and then i can see how ‘collecting’ different peaks in different places is rewarding. like stamps in a passport. you wouldn’t come across people that understood the grind very often but when you did, has to be a pretty cool experience.

an adventurous person with the means to pay tens of thousands of dollars and take off for multiple months at a time to spend 90% of their time in a tent are probably a rare breed, but i can respect it.

also suzzer i’m gonna disagree with the thought that having ropes/oxygen/trail setters diminishes the feat. it’s still you taking step after painstaking step, they ain’t getting carried up the hill. sure those guys in the 50’s that did it all old school definitely earned it more, but it’s like if somebody got to the south pole in 2024 i’m gonna tip my cap. not gonna begrudge them for having GPS when shackleford didn’t :joy:

that one map at the end that showed the paths they took in red and blue tho, yikes. 0% chance they take the middle route if the other woman wasn’t 500m behind them. probably wouldn’t have been climbing that day to begin with


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I don’t mind ropes and oxygen. They’ve been doing that forever. But when it’s multiple guides to one climber, basically doing all the work and dragging the climber up the mountain, sometimes w/o a pack, that doesn’t feel like mountaineering to me.

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It’s really unfortunate the worlds tallest mountain is actually mostly a walk up and requires almost no technical climbing skills. I wish K2 was #1. But I agree with Suzzer, I care nothing about these rich people who can afford to pay a team of Sherpas to help them up to summit with a bunch of supplemental oxygen.

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Obviously lot of people die on Everest, does chance of getting killed correlate strongly with skill/experience or it kind of just a crap shoot assuming you not doing some weird thing to intentionally make it harder?

Yeah.

I like the way his defence is

“Oh no. I just had a consentual relationship with the very young, very vulnerable young woman who was employed by me, living in my house and in a completely dependant position
 And it started three hours into her employment.”

Not much better.

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My friend moved from KC to LA right after high school and had a nanny job waiting for her. The father picked her up at the airport, then put his hand on her leg on the drive back to their house.

She made him let her out of the car, having no idea where she was in LA, and started calling her parents from various pay phones as she worked her way to safety. Must have been very fun for the parents.

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first summit expedition had almost 400 people including 20 sherpas and 10,000 pounds of luggage.

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Yeah that was the siege style, which most serious climbers went away from in the ensuing decades. But you still have to respect the 50s guys because their gear and general knowledge was so inferior to now, and no one had blazed the trail yet.

Now seige-style is back, including helicopter rides that skip the trek to base camp, so one person can become the first man/woman from X country/over 50/under 20/etc. to summit all 14 8k-ers.

Maybe once they get all those records out of the way it will calm down.

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This guy is pretty legit

I think a lot has to do with sheer luck. The weather can turn quick and if you’re unfortunate enough to get caught between camps, it can turn deadly. Also, the level of risk a group is willing to accept has a lot to do with it.

It’s physically demanding for sure, but most reasonably healthy people can do it with the assistance of a good guide, oxygen, and sherpas. I’d be more impressed with someone who completed a triathlon (unless they’re a sherpa who are the real stars of any climb imo)

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https://www.amazon.com/Shortcuts-Climbing-Highest-SHORTCUTS-Paperback/dp/B00QOU095G

This is a great book about mountaineering in general and the 14 8kers.

Also really good:

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It’s a combination of luck and skill I think. There are many things that can kill you at those altitudes, some of those factors you can control, some things you can’t. Especially on Everest the expert climbers are much more likely to die from things they don’t have control over like bad storms and avalanches. But Everest is weird because expert climbers are also the guides and sherpas and have a duty of care to their clients, so they can get themselves into deadly situations trying to save their clients. The bottlenecks near the summit in recent years where aren’t helping things.

Although keep in mind the death rate of climbers on Everest is only like 1%, so a big part of the reason the death toll is so high is because of the sheer number of climbers attempting it.

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i also like that since last year, everyone has to carry up to 20 lbs of their own poop back down. i think it said 35,000 lbs of poop they’ve saved from being left on the mountain.

you get 3 bags that you’re expected to fill up lmao.

i can’t even carry my dog’s bag further than the very next open sewer drain :joy:

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Ha, I’ll bet they just pay someone extra to do it for them. Poop sherpas.

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they didn’t say that, and i wasn’t thinking that, but yeah obviously that’s what they’re doing

I assume the rookie sherpa is now the “poop sherpa”.

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