Quote:
Originally Posted by GP_Matt
I can accept your argument on the way down. You could be close to death yourself and decide to save yourself rather than add another death to the list. But if you are still going up I would consider the summit a failure. Maybe the problem is that for a year all they think about is reaching the top so when they get into altitude and aren't thinking straight reaching the summit becomes more important than the lives of your teammates. Or because they are all paying for guides to get them up they feel that safety should be the guides responsibility. Either way, something is seriously wrong with a situation that values life so poorly.
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The summit of a mountain is only the halfway point of the climb.
As per the study below, most deaths above 8000 metres occur after a climber has reached the summit or a higher point and is descending to safety.
They expend everything getting to that higher point but basically fail to properly evaluate their condition or fail to fully appreciate that descending can also require incredible effort and a great deal of time.
They've got nothing left and the mountain takes them.
A look at Everest mortality between 1920-2006.
The overall mortality rate for Everest mountaineers during the entire 86-year period was 1.3 percent; the rate among climbers was 1.6 percent and the rate among sherpas was 1.1 percent. During the past 25 years, a period during which a greater percentage of moutaineers climbed above 8,000 meters, the death rate for non-Himalayan climbers descending via the longer Tibetan northeast ridge was 3.4 percent, while on the shorter Nepal route it was 2.5 percent.
Factors most associated with the risk of death were excessive fatigue, a tendency to fall behind other climbers and arriving at the summit later in the day. Many of those who died developed symptoms such as confusion, a loss of physical coordination and unconsciousness, which suggest high-altitude cerebral edema, a swelling of the brain that results from leakage of cerebral blood vessels. Symptoms of high-altitude pulmonary edema, which is involved in most high-altitude-related deaths, were suprisingly rare.
"High-altitude cerebral edema symptoms were common among those that died, but signs of pulmonary edema, or excessive fluid in the lungs, were unusual" Firth says. "We also were surprised at how few people died due to avalanches and ice falls in recent years – those usually happen at lower altitudes, and overwhelmingly people died during summit bids above 8,000 feet – and that during descents, the mortality rate for climbers was six time that of sherpas."
http://www.massgeneral.org/about/pre...e.aspx?id=1088
I experienced that to a lesser degree on 19,340 foot Kilimanjaro. Getting to the summit was about eight times tougher than running a marathon. By the time I tapped the summit sign - seven hours to travel about 6.5 km and 4000 feet of gain - I was done like dinner with a persistent, developing, high altitude cough. But turning around and walking downhill to the relative safety of 15,500 feet turned into a rather unexpected, second epic struggle in the same day. Pretty hard to resist just sitting down and try to gather up energy. But that's a bad idea.
If I ever did something like that again, its the one thing I'd remember from that earlier experience . . . . . getting to the top is only halfway in your overall day.
Cowperson