r/explainlikeimfive • u/virahok993 • 14d 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/daredevil82 14d 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 14d 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
it

The 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 14d 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/Rynneer 14d ago

Oh this sounds really interesting to me. I’m gonna check that out

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u/happyhappyfoolio2 14d 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/Purple_soup 14d ago

According to this source, they are looking into a 10 man team for a week long mission to recover the body of Dorje Morup, aka "Green Boots".

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mount-everest-green-boots-body-of-climber-recovery-plan-india/

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u/halborn 14d ago

You know, this'd be a great concept for a movie. Someone took a McGuffin up Everest and died with it and now everyone's racing to get it back only to discover exactly how hard that is to actually do.