Fellow climbers say video footage shows Kristin Harila’s team walking over body of frostbitten man during record ascent
I thought it was common practice to leave them because a rescue attempt would usually kill everyone involved. You either come prepared to go all the way up and all the way down, or you stay on the mountain.
You’re thinking of the Himalaya above a certain height. There it’s impossible to rescue.
On K2, multiple knowledged people have said in interviews that usually you would only need to give him oxygen and then he should have been able to descend himself. Eyewitnesses say that to their knowledge he couldnt move by himself anymore. But those eyewitnesses also said he was dead within an hour, which has been proven to be wrong.
The critical thing here is that no one was asked for help. The crews trying to summit simply decided to continue upwards, and no one tried to bring him down the mountain or ask for help from the basecamp.
K2 is an incredibly dangerous mountain. The possibility of a rescue attempt would depend on many factors that we have no way to know. In these sorts of situations even other climbers nearby might have a complete different opinion. In many cases like this people are often not thinking correctly believing they saw something that wasn’t even there or just completely misperceived due to attitude or exhaustion or illness.
Which just highlights how exploitative the whole endeavour is. Rich Westerners hire poor locals to risk their lives for no good reason beyond clout. These aren’t scientific expeditions, there’s no actual value in them.
I agree, all of these ‘hikes’ should be banned. It’s absurd.
Of course, people will claim that these hikes provide jobs and a healthy economy for people who would otherwise not have work but it just once again shows how these hikers are exploiting desperate people who are literally willing to die for a job.
Oh, come on now. In the worst year, Everest claimed 11 lives.
In the United States of America, on average, 22 people die from COWS.
Extreme sports, like mountain climbing, are dangerous, but not nearly as deadly as fishing (drownings).
I agree with you. It’s not like most of these trips are creating any advancements. People are dying so that other people can see a view and brag about it. What a terrible return for a human life.
I’m all for saving lives and looking out for eachother. That being said, many of these expeditions come with a dumb expectation that random people should also be willing to die. You shouldn’t be able to intentionally do things for fun that you know will likely risk other people’s lives. Many kids have lost their parents because of this.
I kind of doubt that the people who live there really feel like they have a way out at this point. Even if they found a way to be financially stable outside of this industry, I feel like a large amount of very selfish people would be angry that they couldn’t go on these trips with the natives anymore. How could they stop people from showing up?
Maybe people shouldn’t be going on a mountain that’s known to be deadly if they know that they will absolutley need to rely on a guide to survive. Maybe people should be working their way up mountain difficulty, and not just starting at the extreme ones. People should also start to respect the danger of being on a fucking mountain.
So many of these deaths would have been avoided if these expeditions weren’t a thing. If people can’t do this safely without continuously risking the lives of others, we should seriously look into stopping it. So many families are permanently missing loved ones because of this industry.