The Tragic Traffic Jams On Mt. Everest…
Look at this picture – what the summit of Mt. Everest looks like as climbers wait in line to make the last few steps to the summit!
In the last few months, many people have died trying to summit Mt. Everest, and the New York Times has an incredible story about why it is happening…one reason are traffic jams of climbers waiting to reach the top – and running out of oxygen…
Here is a short excerpt from the terrific reporting:
Ed Dohring, a doctor from Arizona, had dreamed his whole life of reaching the top of Mount Everest. But when he summited a few days ago, he was shocked by what he saw.
Climbers were pushing and shoving to take selfies. The flat part of the summit, which he estimated at about the size of two Ping-Pong tables, was packed with 15 or 20 people. To get up there, he had to wait hours in a line, chest to chest, one puffy jacket after the next, on an icy, rocky ridge with a several-thousand foot drop.
He even had to step around the body of a woman who had just died.
“It was scary,” he said by telephone from Kathmandu, Nepal, where he was resting in a hotel room. “It was like a zoo.”
This has been one of the deadliest climbing seasons on Everest, with at least 11 deaths. And at least some seem to have been avoidable.
Powerful reporting once again from The New York Times.
You can see more of their story at their website here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/world/asia/mount-everest-deaths.html
Mount Everest Is Named After A Guy Who Was Never There!
This grim story of what is currently happening on Mt. Everest reminded me of a book I read that had some fascinating trivia about the mountain.
That’s right, the guy whose name is attached to the world’s largest mountain never got within 200 miles of it!
Bill Bryson’s Fascinating Mt. Everest Facts!
Bryson’s terrific book about his travels in England, called “The Road To Little Dribbling”, includes this incredible trivia about George Everest! Bryson explains how this British Bureaucrat was assigned to map part of India – but he never saw Mount Everest at all, and no one really knows how it came to be named after him!
The story get even stranger:
From the book:
“George Everest, incidentally, didn’t pronounce his name Ev-er-rest, as everyone says it today, but as Eve-rest – just two syllables – so that the mountain is not only misnamed but mispronounced. Everest died aged seventy-six in Hyde Park Gardens, London, but was carted off to Hove for burial. No one knows why. He had no known connection to the town or to any part of Sussex. I was greatly taken with the idea of the most famous mountain in the world being named for a man who had no connection to it and whose name we don’t even pronounce correctly. I think that’s rather splendid.”
This is a great book – see more about it here:
We will see what happens on Mt. Everest as they try to reduce the deaths there, but the recent tragedies are shining a harsh spotlight on what is going on up there right now.
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I enjoy stories about mountain climbing (movies, too) and extreme sports. The idea of going there to get a selfie — can’t fathom it.
I find that picture unbelievable! Looking at them waiting my first thought was how does anyone get back down / turn around as it looks like there is no room. Also to step over a dead body OMG.
The fact is, they get stuck up there waiting and they run out of Oxygen, but no one can share theirs or they will die as well..there is NO way these people should be in that position…
It’s so sad how people would push themselves to death for a moment of glory. It’s a metaphor or our society. It’s terribly alarming.
Great point – especially because these people do NOT have the experience to do this difficult climb, so they put all around them in harm’s way as well!
This is fascinating, John. Who would have thought there would be a traffic jam on Mount Everest.
Robbie, and with people who are NOT qualified to be up there – and we are seeing the tragic result!
It’s crazy.
And very dangerous…they are charging a ton of money to take people who have NO business being up there, and we are seeing the deadly result!
Reminds me of the book from a few years ago, Into Thin Air. Nothing much has changed from then and maybe even gotten worse!
Loving the Bryson shout out- one of my top 5 authors
Agree, he is terrific!
Scary situation
First we heard about the ‘garbage mountain’ accumulating on Everest. Now they are queuing up to die at the summit. Time to put a stop to it, I reckon. Close the ‘climb’ and let nature reclaim the place.
Best wishes, Pete.
Pete, they are letting anyone with big $$$ try it, and it’s a disaster!