I don't give very much of a shit about the rich western tourists who embarked on a dangerous and foolhardy adventure.
I feel for the Sherpas that were being paid to be there by these rich wankers, and all the thousands of natives at the foot of the mountain who copped it.
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Prufrock Lucifer, son of the morning!, Mon 27 Apr 2015, 17:53,
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Yeah
A bit how I feel. The sherpas thing is quite interesting: on the one hand you could see it as exploitative because these guys are risking their lives to help wealthy Westerners fulfil some sort of life goal.
On the other hand, from their point of view they are making shitloads of money to support their families. The pay for being a sherpa on an expedition beats being a subsistence farmer in one of the world's poorest countries.
(, Mon 27 Apr 2015, 18:00, Share, Reply)
True.
But the Sherpas are the real deal. They carry other people's backpacks and oxygen tanks. The Sherpas can do the ascent without oxygen, hardly any tourists do, which shows them up as somehow faking it, many Sherpas won't take people who won't bring adequate oxygen. I also hate that all those that don't make it are just left there. People care more about themselves and their own pointless ascent than doing the right thing and giving some dignity to the dead.
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Prufrock Lucifer, son of the morning!, Mon 27 Apr 2015, 18:08,
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The first person to do it without oxygen
was an Italian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Messner), but you're right - the vast majority of the tourist climbers rather than serious climbers are totally reliant on the Sherpas.
On the thing about leaving the dead, I can kind of understand it. It would be a huge operation to drag a corpse down from high up on the mountain, and would be risky for the people doing it (far more likely to have an accident). The bodies further down the mountain are routinely recovered when possible.
The sad truth, as well, is that if anyone was going to recover the bodies from higher up, it'd be the Sherpas again being asked to take the risks...
(, Mon 27 Apr 2015, 18:29, Share, Reply)