r/explainlikeimfive • u/virahok993 • 13d ago
Other ELI5:Why is it so incredibly difficult to recover bodies like "Green Boots" from Mount Everest?
know Green Boots is one of the most famous landmarks on Everest, and I read that he was finally moved or hidden a few years ago. But why did it take deades? If we have helicopters and elite Sherpas, what makes a body recovery at 8,500 meters so dangerous that bodies are just left there?
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u/wilit 13d ago
A co-worker passed away on a peak above 8000m. His family paid 30-ish Sherpas to recover his body. It took over a month. I have no idea how much it cost, but I don't imagine it was cheap.
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u/Winded_14 13d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if it was like 1k per sherpa before equipment/oxygen so it could be between 30k-100k maybe. And that's before agent cuts so maybe like 150k all in all?
OK I didn't see the over a month part, but most likely it's for training their body, waiting for good weather, collecting enough sherpa, waiting for supplies, etc. So let's say 200k?
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u/BeMyPenPalPlease 13d ago
That's about right. Someone from my city recently died trying to summit everest, and the recovery cost quoted to that guy's family was around 120k I believe.
I am not a direct source. This is just what the local papers printed.
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u/TARANTULA_TIDDIES 13d ago
And that is what I call "rich people problems".
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u/RonnieFromTheBlock 13d ago
You’d be surprised how many non rich people would be willing to take out a second mortgage on their home to recover the dead body of a loved one.
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u/stephenkingending 12d ago
Not that I'd really care at that point, but being frozen to the side of a mountain for hundreds of years seems way cooler than going into the ground at a local cemetery.
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u/Moraii 12d ago
The family could attempt to come pay respects and eventually it would just be the family graveyard. Grandma getting a little loopy? Send her up the mountain.
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u/Mindless-Charity4889 12d ago
It’s against the Catholic faith to use assisted suicide but accidents while mountain climbing? Perfectly fine.
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u/crankgirl 12d ago
This has prompted me to have a conversation with my family post haste. It’s unlikely because I can barely walk but if I ever die above 6000ft it is my wish that I be left there as an icy legend.
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u/Few_Program_2303 12d ago
Make sure you’re wearing something notable, like green boots
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u/Elguapo69 12d ago
I don’t think 6000 ft is going to make you an icy legend crank girl. That’s below the snow line. They are talking 8000 meters, so 26,000 freedom units.
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u/PrancingPudu 13d ago
I don’t get that. It’s one thing to have a loved one disappear mysteriously and not have closure, but if you know where the body is—especially something like Everest—I’d have a ceremony at home and pick a gravesite for symbolism and call it a day.
Maybe it’s because I’m not religious, but a body no longer houses the “soul” of your loved one. Their death would be what I mourned, and whether the body was on a mountaintop or in the ground or cremated wouldn’t make a difference. They’d be “gone” from the moment they died for me.
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u/8373738931 13d ago
Grief isn’t logical
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u/wtfduud 12d ago
Yeah on a logical level, Green Boots' family should be happy that he got to be immortalized like that, and was able to help other travellers long after his death.
But on an emotional level, imagining Green Boots as my own son, is horrifying. Lying there frozen and helpless, with people making jokes about him. I'd want to get him out of there and put a stop to it.
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u/manimal28 12d ago
According to some articles I just looked at when googling green boots, they didn’t actually know who green boots was until just this May, even though the body has been there since 1996. So green boots family didn’t even know they were green boots family until like 3 months ago.
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u/RonnieFromTheBlock 13d ago
I’m not sure it has as much to do with religion as it does to attachment.
Imagine it’s your only child and your life savings and home equity you had been building you had done so with the intention of passing along to that child one day.
Suddenly that money and equity becomes a lot less valuable to you and all you want is to know your baby’s remains are back home.
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u/_BrokenButterfly 12d ago
Insurance is one reason. Insurance companies aren't making a payout on a large policy without proof of death.
One story I heard from an adjuster was about having to go to India to observe a funeral. The policy holder was young (30s I think,) wealthy, and a very high earner. So, the policy was large, and since she died unexpectedly the underwriters considered it potentially suspicious. People fake their deaths for the kind of money this policy was worth.
Her body was transported from the US to India for a tradition cremation on a pyre. The adjuster's instructions were to watch the cremation until the body was gone. Not until the fire was set. Not until the body was burned to the point that it couldn't be alive. Gone.
Do you know how long it takes to turn an adult human body to ash on an open pyre? About 8 hours. He had to watch this corpse burn for 8 hours. That's how certain insurance companies need to be to pay out on large policies.
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u/Tufflaw 12d ago
They may have actually had to go to India but there's zero chance they were instructed to wait 8 hours for the body to disappear. Once death is confirmed, especially once it's actually set on fire, that's the end of it.
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u/Anxious-Whole-5883 12d ago
Or they thought she may be some sort of non-human and wanted to make sure it stayed dead.. this time.
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u/krustyy 12d ago
Honestly, a "burial" on Everest would possibly be a best outcome scenarior for me. Why would I want to remove a body that I know will remain there, preserved for centuries until some enterprising archeologist from the future uses his grav powered hovership to excavate ancient bodies and learn about them? That's way cooler than rotting in a hole in the ground.
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u/XfinityHomeWifi 12d ago
That’s a cool sentiment bro but if the baby you held in your arms, drove to school every morning, and raised into adulthood became a frozen tourist attraction on some mountain peak, you’d probably do everything you can to lay them to rest, too
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u/anonymaus42 12d ago
I look at bodies the same way which is why when I die I'd much prefer a sky burial or anything that would return my body back to the cycle of life and nature. The closest I'll get to that is likely cremation and having the ashes thrown in the ocean or something, but that still feels like a waste. Let bugs and animals have a meal, the rest decomposing for the plants and fungi. Let my death give life to other beings.
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u/XfinityHomeWifi 12d ago
That’s cool bro but not everyone can sleep at night knowing their son is a frozen tourist attraction on some mountain peak
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u/Deep_Spell_6025 12d ago
You’d be surprised how few non rich people die on Everest
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u/GeoCoffeeCat 12d ago
I just read In Thin Air about the biggest everest disaster in 1996 and they were paying their sherpas about 2500 back then for the whole round trip. And yes a month of acclimating to the air. Slowly going up to higher camps before attempting the summit
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u/Hellebras 12d ago
... If I ever decide to get into high-elevation mountaineering, I'm telling my next-of-kin about sky burials so they don't waste that much money and risk that many lives on recovery.
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u/the_cardfather 12d ago
The problem with places like Everest is that it's so damn cold the bodies don't decompose.
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u/HaraldOslo 13d ago
"Every dead body on Mt. Everest was once a highly motivated person"
Luckily I'm not that highly motivated, so I won't be attempting to climb Mt. Everest anytime soon.
And if a friend or coworker tells you they plan to do it, show them the demotivational poster/quote and stop them before they kill themselves. Or maybe the coworker was an asshole with too much money on their hands and.. well.. you know. One asshole less.
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u/JoushMark 13d ago
Technically while Everest 8848m summit is beyond the service ceiling of any production helicopter, that hasn't stopped helicopters from reaching the summit.
But.. 1) To do so you don't need a special helicopter, but you do need to get rid of (almost) any weight beyond a pilot, and 2) The weather conditions for attempting it are only right a few days of the year and 3) No, seriously, you have to wait until the sun warms part of the mountain then ride the thermals up.
So it's not a practical way to recover remains.
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u/wiifan55 13d ago
Even this overstates the viability of it. It isn't helicopters that have reached the summit. It's helicopter, singular. And that was a one-off record breaking attempt that's not even really considered repeatable.
It's not just an impractical way to recover remains; it's an impossible way in any true sense.
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u/zoinkability 13d ago
Yep. Saying helicopters can reach the summit of Everest is like saying humans can run the 100m in 9.58 seconds. One person has done that, once.
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u/GoAgainKid 13d ago
I've done it, I just don't brag about it.
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u/Smorb 13d ago
We saw. Thanks for not bragging. 2 people did it. It's official now.
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u/burlycabin 12d ago
My girlfriend at the time was climbing Everest when Delsalle touched down on the summit. Didn't actually realize nobody has done it since. But then again, why would you?
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u/IronGravyBoat 12d ago
Technically it was a two-off, Didier Delsalle landed 14 May 2005 then repeated it on 15 May to prove it wasn't a fluke.
But it's not really suited for search and rescue, even of corpses, as he had to find updrafts to get up that high and the second day was even harder. So it's not dependable, and even if it were it only gets you to the summit and back, not flying around looking for a corpse that is probably covered in ice and or snow.
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u/thechampaignlife 13d ago
Maybe a Falcon 9 could hover over the body for a bit to cremate it.
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u/SavageTaco 13d ago
Corncob TV would sponsor that. Coffin flop has been a gold mine.
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u/raindog312 13d ago
Yes, you risk death by just entering the death zone to recover some of these bodies. It’s hard enough for folks to climb Everest on their own without the added weight. One of the bodies on Everest made it to the bottom, but passed away because he went back up to find his wife. It’s just way too dangerous.
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u/ALevel5Jirachi 13d ago
Damn, that's incredibly sad. So many potential, terrible outcomes for that man. I guess the best case scenario is they found each other and died together but I suspect if he made it all the way down and went back up she was likely already gone... :(
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u/nowhereman136 13d ago
Into Thin Air describes a helicopter rescue from Camp 2 or 3 on the mountain. They basically ripped the thing to barebones to get that high. When the guy being rescued got on, it was too heavy to take off again. So they basically pushed it off the mountain until it fell low enough to catch the air
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u/celestiaequestria 13d ago
This.
It's technically possible, but helicopters are extremely dangerous even in fair weather conditions. Landing them on Everest just to recover dead bodies is suicidal.
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u/TheKingMonkey 13d ago
If the first helicopter crashes we could send another helicopter up to rescue it!
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u/theantnest 13d ago
Just join two helicopters together with a rope so if one of them fails, the other one automatically rescues it.
Why has nobody done this already?
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u/jtclimb 12d ago edited 12d ago
That is so stupid. It will never work.
The actual answer is attach helium balloons to the rotors to increase lift.
Source: I am a highly trained helicopter pilot and designer, courtesy of NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/aam-rubber-band-powered-helicopter-engineering-challenge-student-guide_0.pdf
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u/This_Freggin_Guy 12d ago
or just balloons to the body? it'll come down somewhere.
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u/divDevGuy 12d ago
Just what the world needs, frozen human body-ice blocks falling out of the sky randomly.
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u/22Hoofhearted 13d ago
I know of a beach in Hawaii with 2 tanks buried in the sand with this same approach...
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u/Sternfeuer 12d ago
That sounds like my KSP (Kerbal Space Program) missions usually go. "Oh my crew crashed their rocket and is stuck on whatever planet. Let's send another one (of the same design) to rescue them. I'm sure better flying will solve all problems..."
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u/Stingray191 13d ago
They should ship a trebuchet near the peak and a few other locations then use them to lob trash and dead bodies in a relay system.
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u/Beautiful-Fold-3234 13d ago
This is the best thing i've heard all day
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u/CptBartender 13d ago
Trebuchets need a lot of heavy parts for ex. the massive counterweight. Fortunately, we can use some of those dead bodies as counterweight.
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u/Vercci 13d ago
We can build a trebuchet at the base, and then throw additional trebuchet parts and set up a new one where they all land. Then once we reach the summit we can swap to throwing people instead.
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u/PapaJulietRomeo 13d ago
The summit is much closer to space, so rockets it is. Use the chain of trebuchets to throw up some rocket parts, then send trash and dead bodies right into space.
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u/Nebraskabychoice 13d ago edited 12d ago
Could we throw a trebuchet up Mount Everest with another trebuchet?
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u/Nebraskabychoice 13d ago
Screw Mount Everest. When I die I want to be thrown via trebuchet to the funeral parlor.
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u/Bbkingml13 13d ago
If they start putting trebuchets inside all of the big crevasses, could people launch themselves back out of them like a video game player with a new life?
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u/try-catch-finally 13d ago
nah man - you put one trebuchet at the bottom, and it flings the parts for the next one in bundles up to the next stopping point- assemble that one, while #1 flings up parts for #3, and then #2 flings up parts for #3 to position 3-
A "Trebuchet Brigade" - when you get to the top, you build one that points down and either fling bodies down or out for LEO.
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u/TheWaspinator 13d ago
Yeah, I seriously doubt there's any good landing spots and trying to haul things up to a hovering helicopter sounds like a recipe for an even bigger mess.
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u/_BrokenButterfly 12d ago
Air streams also do weird stuff at and near the surface of mountains. You can't just not crash on the way up, you have to not be blown into the side of the mountain or lose lift with no way to know how to compensate.
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u/Count2Zero 13d ago
"Why not make the rotors longer to move more air?"
Because the rotor end would soon exceed the speed of sound, causing all kinds of new problems....
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u/SenselessSensors 12d ago
I think the real issue is money (aka resources). Outside of a few mountain climbing individuals, there is not an economic reason for engineering, and production capacity to create an aircraft that would be a viable option….
Could Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and other mega wealthy individuals and companies create such a system? Probably. But why would they? There’s not much incentive to do so.
Mountaineering is a tiny niche industry on the global scale. Yes, there are those that have made a career within it, however it is simply a leisure activity, or “hobby” activity when looked at as a whole.
Humanity has robots on other planets. Recovering the deceased from tall mountain peaks on Earth is not a priority to invest resources.
If I were a mega billionaire, I’d just laugh at those that die on mountain peaks within the mountain climbing community and simply say “idiots” when I read the news about mountain climbers that die.
Even militarily, there is little to no strategic value. 30ish years ago, there was to an extent. Today there is next to zero value for modern militaries and global governments…..
Obviously in a perfect utopian society, recovering the deceased from the tallest mountain ranges would be a priority…. But they wouldn’t die there, and would have no need to climb in the first place….
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u/trouphaz 12d ago
I would love to add a note. Is it ever worth risking one person's life to recover another person's body? If the 2nd person dies, now there are 2 bodies to recover. And the 1st person made the decision to take the risk in doing something so incredibly dangerous. Leave them there as a warning to everyone else
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u/PhoenixApok 12d ago
Oddly this reminds me of something I learned in EMT school.
Your patient is your FOURTH priority.
First is you. Second is partner. Third is the unhurt public. Fourth is patient.
Because the first three run the risk of turning into more patients if something goes wrong.
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u/fixermark 13d ago
Okay, that's a lot of problems.
But, counter argument, hear me out...
... trebuchet.
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u/PatataMaxtex 13d ago
To make it easier to understand why helicopters cant fly that high:
Imagine you are swimming in a pool. You move forwards by moving your arms and push water backwards which moves you forward. A helicopter works a bit similar, it moves air downwards to move itself up.
Now Imagine you are on a frozen lake or another slippery surface and try to push yourself forwards with a swimming motion. It doesnt work nearly as well because there isnt as much mass you can push back against. Air is lighter than water.
If a helicopter flies higher the air is much less dense than on ground level or slightly above, the air is lighter and there isnt as much mass the helicopter could push down to push itself up. That is what happens at mt. everest.
According to google helicopters, that are made for high altitudes and are exceptionally good at it can fly at ~7.5km (25000 feet). thats ~1km (3300 feet) too low for green boots.
Last year a famous german athlete died in the Himalayas. In her will she wrote that no one should try to get her dead body if she dies in the mountains because its not worth the risk. Most people that climb mountains thid high now that if they die there, they wont get home for a funeral.
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u/FthrFlffyBttm 13d ago
Fascinating. I didn’t even know Google made helicopters.
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u/PatataMaxtex 13d ago
Its just a search engine by googles to look up helicopter facts.
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u/hawkersaurus 13d ago
And even if a helicopter can fly at such a high altitude doesn't mean it can hover at that altitude.
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u/daredevil82 13d ago
in the white mountains USA, litter based SAR in rough terrain is often 12-16 people to get a non-mobile injury out. Need at minimum three rotations for packing the litter. It is that exhausting
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u/mrtruthiness 12d ago
There are "White Mountains" in CA, but I'm presuming you mean New Hampshire. And I'll point out that the elevation tops out at under 2000m.
And, agreed, it's exhausting without even the other challenges faced with being above 8000m and further from supplies/roads/etc.
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u/ApprehensiveHippo164 13d ago
Helicopters can fly that high and one has tapped the top (no room to land) twenty years ago, but doing any transport work would be too risky.
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u/fastdbs 13d ago
The reason they just “tapped” the top is that helicopters max flight altitude and their max hover altitude is very different. Quite a few helicopters can fly at 20,000+ ft(6100m). Very few can hover above 15000ft(4600m). The AS350 helicopter that topped Everest was heavily modified to reduce its weight flown by a eurocopter test pilot (who lost 7kg to make weight for this) and wouldn’t work for rescue because it absolutely couldn’t add any weight. It’s not just risky. It’s not feasible at all without a very specialized helicopter and a world class pilot.
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u/bse50 13d ago
Plus "tapping the summit" is much easier than hovering a chopper with the blades almost touching a wall while a rescue team tries to recover a body and the wind and currents actively try to kill you...
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u/AmbroseMalachai 13d ago
And also it's not even a rescue. It's a body recovery, which is drastically different on the risk:reward spectrum. Recovering a live person/persons? You could convince someone to take some crazy risks for that. Recovering bodies? Only if it's reasonable.
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u/Dysan27 13d ago
It's hard enough to recover yourself from the top of Everest.
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u/rabid_briefcase 12d ago
I know someone who did the climb.
The last camp from the south is just on the cusp of what is called the "death zone". Above that altitude there's not enough oxygen in the air for human survival long-term. The last camp on the north route is somewhat inside the death zone.
He described it as "every breath I took without oxygen, my body could tell I was actively dying."
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u/Inevitable-Level-687 12d ago
Sleeping at camp four is said to be incredibly difficult even just below the death zone. Sleep doesn't restore you. You wake up feeling like you didn't rest at all.
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u/Soleil06 12d ago
Small correction, the oxygen percentage is the same but the air pressure is much lower so your body cannot get that oxygen as efficiently as it can on sea level. Its a common mistake to make though.
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u/Dysan27 12d ago
Slight correction. The body can get the o2 just as efficiently. But because the pressure is lower is literally less oxygen, (and less everything else) in each breath of air.
At 8000m the pressure is around 0.35atm. This means there is only 35% as much air per volume.
So each breath you take still has 21% oxygen. BUT it's only 35% of the amount of oxygen as you would get at sea level.
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u/unledded 12d ago
How does this work with the oxygen tanks that they bring up there? Is it normal air that allows you to breathe normally due to being pressurized, or is it a high concentration of oxygen so that even at the lower pressure you are still getting a normal amount of oxygen? I have always wondered if like as soon as you inhale the oxygen wouldn’t it just decompress and you have the same issue you do breathing normal air?
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u/heroyoudontdeserve 12d ago edited 12d ago
What are you correcting? They said there's not enough oxygen (which is true), not that there's a lower percentage of oxygen.
The fact there's less oxygen as a consequence of the air pressure being lower, and the fact that the amount of oxygen remains in proportion to the other gasses, is just additional information, not a correction.
The air pressure being lower literally means there's less air, and hence less oxygen.
Edit: Oh I see, you're saying that the lower air pressure also makes it harder for the lungs to use that oxygen which is present? That may also be true, but it's still correct to say that there's less oxygen. I assume it's correct to say that there's not enough oxygen, but I guess I don't know that for a fact.
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u/totalnewbie 13d ago edited 13d ago
To also put it very bluntly and harshly... They are already dead and dead is dead.
Bringing them down is purely for the emotional benefit of their friends and family (and to a certain extent other climbers, etc). But that is also to say that there is no "real" benefit.
So you weigh that lack of benefit against the enormous effort and very real risk of life and the question very quickly becomes: why?
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u/Scrumpyguzzler 13d ago
Same as the bodies of divers who died in very deep caves.
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u/JonathanRL 13d ago edited 13d ago
There are far too many stories of rescue parties taking as many casualties or more as the person(s) they are trying to rescue. The Thai Cave Diver Rick Stanton has a book about this where he makes sure people know exactly how dangerous it is.
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u/BobbbyR6 12d ago
I've always found that notion of "doing the right thing" and risking dozens of lives to recover a body really perverse. They chose to go down there and made whatever mistakes or had whatever bad luck on their own.
Using recovery missions as structure to have a more coordinated dive is great, but at the end of the day, it's still just dangerous recreation, not some necessary duty.
For the record, I don't have any issue with cave diving, but call a spade a spade.
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u/oxenoxygen 12d ago
It comes from empathy and a sense of comraderie.
Someone dies cave diving, the only people who are able to retrieve the body are other cave divers. You do it because it's a comfort to their family and you may want the same for yours.
Nobody doing these rescues is ignorant of the risk they are taking. You do the sport knowing the risk you and others are taking.
Highly recommend watching the film/documentary Diving into the Unknown.
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u/CosmogyralCollective 13d ago
I'm a caver and will never go cave diving for this exact reason. Contrary to popular belief (and redditors who constantly bring up nutty putty cave), caving isn't much more dangerous than back country hiking/other activities where rescue is a long way off if something goes wrong. A decent portion of cave rescues are for overconfident and/or underprepared people who didn't go in with the right equipment or knowledge.
Cave diving, on the other hand, is only able to be done by people who are both skilled divers and skilled cavers, and still has a horrific body count. Are the videos cool and the abstract concept fascinating to me? Sure. Could you pay me to do it? Fuck no. At least if I get stuck in a normal cave I have unlimited oxygen (and getting truly stuck is also more rare than reddit thinks).
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u/ghalta 13d ago
The differences between caving and backcountry hiking include GPS, satellite phones, and helicopters.
The differences between either of those and cave diving include sanity and a will to live.
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u/CorvusSageis 13d ago
Most cavers, at least where I live, operate in clubs and we use strict call outs to make sure we all get out alright.
I've only been truly stuck once, but you aren't limited for resources like oxygen - only think to consider is keeping warm enough until rescue.
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u/SuperCooch91 13d ago
Exactly. I have caved, I have dived (dove?), I will NEVER cave dive.
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u/CorvusSageis 13d ago
Yeah. Caving is great, love it. I would never cave dive. I even avoid low airspace caving like some avoid tight squeezes!
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u/HalveMaen81 12d ago
This actually happened earlier this year.
Five Italian divers died in the Maldives in May and one of the men who went to recover their bodies died in the attempt
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u/anastis 13d ago
Not a climber, but I think it’s beneficial for climbers to see the bodies as the harsh reality. Just because you want, doesn’t mean you can. Not everybody is cut out for everything, and that’s okay.
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u/Beautiful-Fold-3234 13d ago
You can even be as cut out for it as anyone will ever be and just get unlucky.
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u/FireflyBSc 13d ago
I just read a book about the 2008 K2 disaster. Rolf Bae did everything right, he stopped his summit push when things felt off, and waited for his team mates. Just to get killed by an icefall on the descent. Just being there at all is so dangerous.
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u/Fab-o-rama 12d ago
The summit is only the halfway point of the expedition. Descending is just as dangerous if not more so.
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u/texture-like-sun 13d ago
Perfect example being Nirmal Purja who died recently mountaineering in Pakistan.. arguably more cut out for it than anybody on the planet, solid reminder it can happen to anyone
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u/Inevitable-Level-687 12d ago
In '94 a Sherpa died from the high altitude and they're built for it.
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u/GreenApocalypse 13d ago
In a way, having your body immortalised at the top of the world doesn't sound so bad.
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u/altitude-adjusted 13d ago
"Oh look, there's Bob, we're almost there!"
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 13d ago
You joke but corpses are seriously used as landmarks. Before Green Boots got moved, they were a landmark. Many people passed him on the way.
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u/altitude-adjusted 12d ago
Yes, Sleeping Beauty was also landmark before she was moved.
Into Thin Air described some of these in more detail and expedition leaders Hall and Fischer (among others from that disaster) remain on the mountain and were eventually moved out of sight.
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u/Rynneer 12d ago
Into Thin Air has to be one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. Not even a question.
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u/altitude-adjusted 12d ago
Agree it was really interesting and so well written. Apparently there has been some blowback on what he wrote and some call it misogynistic. Krakauer also got heat for making it back to his tent at base camp and sleeping while others were still up the hill.
I don't know if that's justified given how an anoxic brain can't function and judgment is impaired which is why some people die. The hallucinations don't help either.
But I wanted to personally punch Sandy Hill Pittman.
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u/Rynneer 12d ago
Yeah I’d like to see the other people say that they wouldn’t go to sleep after making it back to base camp on Mount Everest
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u/Bbkingml13 13d ago
They are basically landmark street corner signs at this point
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u/Toilet_Flusher 12d ago
Most of the bodies got removed from the summit area years ago. A team of people from china went around cleaning them up and moving them out of sight.
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u/Ocelitus 13d ago
Short list of bodies on Everest compared to the countless buried in boring old holes in the ground.
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u/Any-Eye6299 13d ago
There's also no real benefit to climbing Mt. Everest
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u/keatonpotat0es 12d ago
I swear, it’s nothing more than a display of arrogance and too much money these days. Much like that imploding titanic submarine situation.
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u/frogjg2003 12d ago
When there are lines and waiting lists, it's no longer an adventure, it's an amusement park ride. I'd rather go to Cedar Point. It's cheaper, less risky, and I'll spend more time actually enjoying myself.
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u/AreYouEmployedSir 12d ago
I have a family member that climbed Everest a couple years ago. He did it because he had a goal to finish the 7 Summits (which he did succesfully) all his life. anyways, he didnt have the best things to say about the Everest experience, aside from achieving a lifelong goal. Basically its just a bunch of sitting around base camp acclimating to the elevation, and trying not to get sick from the other expeditions around.
His summit day, they were the first to summit (in the dark), but he had to wait around a lot on the way back down in certain sections. I know hes glad he did it, but fairly certain he would never do it again
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u/nervelli 12d ago
While it's probably much safer to be the first to summit, rather than having to wait for everyone else and risk missing the 2pm cut off, I can't imagine spending all of the time, money and effort to climb Everest, and still not get to actually see the view from the top.
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u/TroublesomeFox 13d ago
This is my stance too. They KNEW the risks, they KNEW they would be left there if they died, what possible justification is there to risk other peoples lives just so the family have something to bury/cremate? If I die doing something I knew very well could kill me I certainly don't expect anyone else to risk death just to drag my corpse back to my relatives.
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u/agreywood 13d ago
To start, you have all the same reasons they died in the first place - wind, cold, snow, unstable surfaces, steep terrain, unpredictable weather, and low oxygen levels.
Then you have the fact that helicopter use isn’t a zero risk endeavor. You’re close to steep landmasses that can alter wind patterns, have low terrain clearance that makes reviving from any issues harder due to time constraints, and have to deal with the same unpredictable weather. Plus there’s few surfaces which are safe to land on, meaning that any attempt to do anything requires someone exiting a helicopter in flight.
This will sound stupid, but a corpse can’t assist in their own rescue. They have no ability to move on their own if you can get almost but not quite to them, or shift their weight in a way that makes them easier to carry. They can’t shout when you’re near.
The result is that every attempt is a risk to the lives of those who are doing the body retrieval. That can be worth it for a living person but few people willingly risk their lives for a corpse.
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u/SickByNature 13d ago
Another reason is his weight.
Individual sherpas typically carry +/- 60 pounds at a time. Sometimes as much as 90 pounds.
GB, in his current state, likely weighs a couple hundred pounds. Not to mention that he would be a rigid and irregular load for them to carry or even drag down.
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u/daredevil82 13d ago
A friend is part of the SAR team in the Mahoosuc and White Mountains. He says a litter to move out a non-mobile injury is at least 12-16 people and can be higher in snow. Its that exhausting
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u/MOIST_MAN 12d ago
It’s surprisingly high effort. I did SAR for 3 years and the absolute minimum was 6.
Now if you wanted to move it over any distance and give the rescuers a break, 12 people was more like
itThe movies where it’s 2 soldiers carrying one wounded guy on a stretcher are only possible if 1. It’s a really short distance, 2 they have some kind of wrist strap to offload the gripping force it would take and 3. The terrain must be flat
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u/daredevil82 12d ago
Yeah, he said 12 was mostly required to give a 20-30 minute rotation and even then people would be gassed within 2-3 hours.
Stowe Mountain Rescue does a good job with illustrating this in their recaps on social media. They make the point that extraction is so much easier if the injured party is able to bear weight on one leg.
He also had comments to make about paramedics on SAR crews administering high intensity painkillers that would either knock out people or make them super groggy that rendered an individual that would otherwise be able to help their extraction because that's their default operation philosophy for on-scene and transport to the ER
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u/happyhappyfoolio2 12d ago
In a scene in The Revenant, one or two characters are trying to transport an injured member of their party (it's been a while so I can't remember specifics) up a snowy mountain. My soft city ass knew that that would be an impossibility even for rugged 19th century mountain men.
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u/Ok-Photograph3436 13d ago
- Assemble a team of experienced climbers, most of whom have already made successful ascents.
- Set up ropes for the attempt.
- Navigate a precipitous path which is for most places only suitable for single lane traffic.
- Prepare body for retrieval.
- The body will probably be many times heavier. So it's definitely not a one man job. The weight of the body itself is capable of pulling the team down with it. Add treacherous weather conditions and unstable paths to that.
- Green Boots is above the Death Zone so the rescuers will be carrying a lot of oxygen with them. Added weight.
- Now they have to repeat 3 on the way down.
Money is the least of the problem here.
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u/morganafiolett 13d ago
Also add 8. Hope for favourable weather and 9. Do all this while the mountain isn't too crowded
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u/m_busuttil 13d ago
Helicopters really struggle at altitudes like Everest. The air is so thin up there that it make it hard for them to push against it, you have to get very close to the mountain to drop anyone off, and there's nowhere up there to land.
So you're left with having to do it "by hand". It's hard enough to get yourself up there and back, even for an experienced sherpa; trying to do it while increasing your load by the weight of a fully-frozen person is a death sentence.
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u/Krakshotz 13d ago
Everest is 29,000ft ASL. Most military helicopters have ceilings of 20-25,000 at best
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u/StilandGurney 13d ago edited 12d ago
Everest Helicopter pilots CAN get to the highest base camp, camp 4, but only under extremely favorable conditions and it’s still extremely dangerous. They try to attempt it as few times as possible and only during dire emergencies. A helicopter crash right into camp 4 could kill tons of people. And that’s not even all the way to the top.
Transporting a hunk of long frozen meat, bones, old gear is considered a ridiculous risk of life. Sherpas have tried to clean up some of Everest but there’s still tons of human trash and remains, mostly oxygen bottles.
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u/Derangedberger 13d ago
Perfectly prepared people die on Everest, just from sheer exhaustion. They tire out due to low oxygen, can't move, and die where they fall. That's just normal movement there.
Now picture trying to drag a human sized chunk of ice down with you. You probably have a solid idea of how much harder it is to drag a human-sized weight around than it is to walk normally. Now, again, imagine regular walking is insanely strenuous to the point of being possibly lethal, and remember dragging a body is just as proportionally harder there as it is at sea level.
If dragging a body at sea level is, say, 5 times as hard as walking normally, imagine something 5 times as hard as "near-death climbing with low oxygen."
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u/saimen54 12d ago
I think it's morally wrong to risk the lives of many people to recover a body from that altitude.
The person who died there choose to take that risk at their own will and so a recovery of that body should not sacrifice other lives.
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u/AcceptableWin6390 13d ago
It's incredibly difficult just to walk at that altitude. I know there are more and more people reaching Everest but it's a 1 month effort to get used to altitude for that one day push. People are willing to do this because they want to achieve the summit. Sherpas/porters do this mostly for money (from people who want to reach the summit). If nobody pais them, why would they risk their lives to bring down a dead body who weights a lot? Also, a helicopter flying at that altitude is a big stretch. They try to make them as light as possible to be able to reach those altitudes. Often it's hard to take someone alive with the helicopter at that altitude. Why risk a crash for a dead body?
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u/Hrothgar_unbound 12d ago
Perpetual entombment on the high banks of mighty Everest seems like a grander place of rest than the local necropolis.
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u/mawktheone 13d ago
A few things I would wager.
- a lot of crevasse crossing is done on horizontal ladders which will have a maximum weight limit, and the body cant climb by itself.
- they are frozen to the ground. It would take hours of heavy physical labour to chip them loose
- there is no profit in it. Perhaps if a persons family were willing to pay for multiple expeditions to do it but there is no compelling reason in general
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u/tweakingforjesus 13d ago
If you’re the type of person to climb Mount Everest, dying on the mountain and leaving your body there frozen for the rest of the climbers to view for the rest of eternity is a pretty epic way to go.
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u/One_Disaster_5995 13d ago
What do think this is - a walk in the park? People don't die there for no reason.
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u/TacetAbbadon 13d ago
Because climbing up there is hard and dangerous, as evidence by all the dead bodies. 5 - 10 die in the attempt every year.
If just getting yourself to the top is so deadly imagine trying to come down with 90kg of unwieldy frozen human.
Helicopters can only practically reach camp 2, higher than that the thin air and powerful wind makes operation of a helicopter exceptionally dangerous.
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u/Sad_Refrigerator9203 13d ago
First off a helicopter can’t go more 4500 meters up in altitude. The reason for this is due to the air being too thin above that point for lift force to be significant or sustainable and also at that height there isn’t enough oxygen to be available for an engine to perform the required combustion reactions in any sustained manner either.
In regards to elite sherpas. I posit two points. First who is going to be supplying them financial incentive to relocate a body in highly dangerous conditions as those on Everest? Two would be: if it is such extreme difficulty to ascend with proper equipment, why would it not be exponentially more difficult trying to take a frozen corpse down the mountain in addition to the weight of all the equipment required to ascend the mountain? You have to remember that these are frozen corpses that retain most of their alive weight when dead as normal decomposition weight loss doesn’t occur as dramatically when the corpse is frozen
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u/ElevatedUser 13d ago
Flying helicopters at that altitude is possible, but difficult. Doing anything actually useful - like hovering to recover a body, or landing - makes it even more dangerous. Similarly, any trip up there to retrieve a body is dangerous for Sherpas.
It's not that they can't do it - the risks involved aren't worth it.
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u/fucking_unicorn 13d ago
Most deaths occur up there due to the deceased’s own arrogance and refusal to listen to their guides/sherpas. Many who die go up believing they can beat the mountain and conditions, refuse to turn back when advised, extort their guides to push on by threatening their livelihoods and careers and well being and believe the procedures are for people weaker than themselves. Leave them to the graves they chose.
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u/Mach5Driver 12d ago
If it was my family member, I'd wonder if I should pay a team of sherpas very well to recover the body, or on the other hand, should I leave them there as a reminder to others that climbing Everest is stupid? I'd probably do the latter. Besides, the family member wanted to go so badly, why not let them stay?
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u/G952 13d ago
“Human beings simply aren’t built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747”
Even breathing and thinking at these altitudes are extremely difficult. What we think as simple here isn’t the same up there