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In 2008, the fatality rate of those leaving Base Camp for a summit bid was 30.5 percent, higher than the casualty rate at Omaha Beach on D-day. Among high-altitude climbers if not
statisticians, there’s no comparison: K2 is more lethal than Everest.
Sherpas did the heavy lifting, and thousands of happy amateurs joined the Mount Everest summit roll.
But people don’t climb because it makes sense. You can come up with reasons—it gives direction to the lost, friends to the loner, honor to the reprobate, thrills to the bored—but, ultimately, the quest for a summit defies logic. So does passion. So does a trip to the moon. There are better things to do. Safer, cheaper, more practical. That’s not the point.
Sherpas have wider blood vessels.
They
breathe more often when at rest, providing their blood with more oxygen to absorb, and they exhale more nitric oxide, a ma...
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developed still causes mass confusion. According to custom, an individual’s primary name is one of seven weekdays. Boys and girls born on Monday go by Dawa; Tuesday babies are Mingma; for Wednesday, it’s Lhakpa; Thursday, Phurbu; Friday, Pasang; Saturday, Pemba; Sunday, Nima.
Making matters more confusing, primary names can be altered or scrapped based on events in a child’s life. If a baby falls ill, the parents may change his name to Chhiring (long life), to confound the evil spirits. If a child dies, the parents may switch a sibling’s name to something inconspicuous like Kikuli (puppy), so evil spirits will overlook her.
The foreign climbers also had to take their chances: Their lives were uninsurable. Even specialized insurers, such as Patriot Extreme, decline to extend coverage to climbers for accidents and deaths above 14,760 feet. That’s lower than K2 Base Camp.
“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”
For Everest losses, families sometimes send a recovery team. This doesn’t happen on K2.
The Savage Mountain devours its victims during the long winter between climbing seasons. It encases the torsos in ice and grates them against the rocks, only to spit out the digested remains
decades later, scattering limbs among ava...
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During a sky burial, Buddhist lamas or others with religious authority carry the body to a platform on a hill. While burning incense and reciting mantras, they hack the corpse into
chunks and slices. They pound the bones with a rock or hammer, beating the flesh into a pulp and mixing in tea, butter, and milk. The preparation attracts vultures, and the birds consume the carcass, carrying the spirit aloft and burying it in the sky, where it belongs.
“In Islamabad, Armageddon is nothing special.”
A K2 permit was $12,000, while Everest cost seven times more
The Park Service installs and maintains fixed lines on Denali, and U.S. taxpayers pay for helicopter rescues.
Muslims consider the mouth, which recites the Qur’an, to be the holiest part of the body.
Compared with those who climbed Everest, the K2 mountaineers more blatantly blurred the line between crazy and courageous.
Yet, in summer, for a few hallowed days every few years, the winds die. This weather window is brief and precious. Until it opens, climbers acclimatize so they can bolt up the mountain when the forecaster calls.
The more time spent in the Death Zone, the weaker and sicker a climber becomes. The digestive system fails and the body devours its own muscle tissue.
Acclimatization increases the amount of time climbers can survive in the Death Zone. During acclimatization, the kidneys excrete more bicarbonate ions, acidifying the blood, which quickens respiration. The bone marrow revs up red-cell production so the blood can transport more oxygen. Blood flow surges in the brain and lungs. Without acclimatization to altitude, someone dropped off at the summit of K2 would black out within minutes. Those who have acclimatized can last several days.
Viagra can help. The drug relaxes the vessel tone of the pulmonary arteries and can increase exercise tolerance, so mountaineers commonly take it.
Expedition-style climbing is akin to trench warfare.
Alpine-style climbing is like a blitz.
They generally are highly skilled and experienced, and they attract considerably more attention and respect than expedition-style climbers.
Faster clients get caught behind slower ones, or climbers set out in groups, placing the weight of several bodies on a single anchor, which “increases the chance that somebody is going to blow up the whole thing,”
Overloaded anchors pull out and then everyone goes down, initiating a death train.
One method is to inhale deeply, pursing one’s lips and exhaling forcefully, as if blowing up a balloon. This is known as pressure breathing; physicians call it positive end expiratory pressure, or PEEP. Patients with emphysema or other breathing difficulties use this technique reflexively, and research shows that it improves gas exchange and prevents fluid buildup in the lungs. The pursed lips and forceful exhalation increase air pressure, which resuscitates the lungs’ air sacs, or alveoli, so they can expand, absorb more oxygen, and expel more carbon dioxide.
“Kicking off rocks [that could hit climbers below], stepping on ropes with crampons, yanking fixed lines, clipping six people to a rope that should only hold two. When I saw the crowd climbing, I thought, ‘What the hell? They’re going to get us killed.’ ”
“Rope was missing, ice screws were missing, and I was thinking, ‘What the fuck? We’re at 8,000 meters’ [about 27,000 feet] but we don’t even have the essentials
Resentment, language barriers, and oxygen deprivation all contributed to the flawed decision-making that followed.
American mountaineer Ed Viesturs calls this section The Motivator, because the seracs overhanging the gutter inspire climbers to get the hell out of there.
Chhiring considered it. Taking responsibility for Pasang—stranded without an axe, on the deadliest pitch of K2, on a moonless night, without a rope, beneath crumbling seracs—wasn’t rational.
“K2 sounds a warning before she tries to kill you,”
“And I was thinking, ‘I am so fucking fucked I don’t know how to unfuck myself.’
The crime of survival weighed upon him.
