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)