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Skiing Down Everest
dalibor writes: "Tired of skiing in crowded tourist resorts? Why not ski from the top of Everest, where you can enjoy virgin snow and ski for 4,000 meters? Davo Karnicar from Slovenia is the first to have accomplished a full top-to-bottom ski descent from the world's tallest mountain, Mount Everest! The event was transmited live via the Internet. http://www.everest.simobil.si/" Yahoo has a great report.
The article mentions that he is a father of three. Does anyone else find it irresponsible that he, and any of the other everest climbers, would risk his life for a thrill when he has a family with young children?
I wonder how much money and how many people risk thier lives to go rescue these idiots when they get lost/break a leg/get frostbit/get snowed under/get even less intelligent?
Well, this was one of several slovenian expeditions in last few years. A couple of guys stayed in the mountain. Nobody risked their life to save them. When you try to climb Everest and you don't come down, people tend to leave you there rather than stupidly risk their life trying to find you.
disclaimer: I might be right.
If he lingers at the bottom of the mountain too long, does that monster come after him and eat him up?
Does anyone else find it irresponsible that he, and any of the other everest climbers, would risk his life for a thrill when he has a family with young children?
That's a damn silly question or statement. If having children meant the end of all challange and risk, having children wouldn't be worth living.
Just about the riskiest thing we do in normal daily life is to drive our cars and/or cross the street, and both of these are very risky in statistical terms despite the fact that we think of them as mundane. Are you suggesting that we give up such dangerous activities when we have children? Are we meant to tuck ourselves away in a cocoon?
For goodness sake. If anything, it's a stronger argument that one could increase exposure to risk if one were so inclined after having children, since one's genetic inheritance is then already released for posterity. Mind you, I don't buy that either. We're not here for long, so we have to make life worth living whatever our stage in life. That almost always involves risk.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
...when's the lift going in?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
That's one of the sillies things I've ever seen here. I've yet to work with geeks that weren't into sports. Sure, not ALL off them, but most. One of the funnest things I ever did was go on a ski trip with two. . Generally participating more than the average set of fans.
On a somewhat related, note my Sonners kicked Texas' ass 63-14!
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Crap! Shoulda previewed, I meant the Sooners (Oklahoma that is)
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
"Into Thin Air" and "The Climb" both, IIRC, described some pretty filthy base camps.
Perhaps things have made a significant change for the better in the past half-decade.
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"lost two fingers to frostbite when skiing down Everest in a failed attempt in 1996." he may only have 8 fingers, but he has gotta have a big set of balls to make up for it. If I lost a few fingers skiing, I would prolly switch to a different hobby, like... tv
mmmmmmm Shiner Bock
Oh, come on. Don't be so anal. This is nerdy. Don't tell me it's not a cool hack to ski down Everest. This isn't football, it's a clever stunt.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
How much would a ticket cost?
The skier was wearing a GNU range of Slackwear fashion ski clothing, topped off with a Redhat. To get up to full speed he Tux his poles behind him.
He would have gone faster but his off piste route was Apache one...
I'll get my coat....
ozric.net
This guy had to have a lot of tech working for him, ie His modified skis, clothing that would keep him warm but still allow him to ski comfortably, cameras that would work in that weather. (I'm on a 14.4, so I'm not gonna even try to see the video...) I
To write a haiku - all you need is the correct - number of syli...
There have already been sat phone calls fromm everest, so it wouldn't be much of a big deal if someone did it again. Not to say sat phone companies don't sponsor climbing teams with equipment...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I think I've been reading Slashdot at -1 for too long. After reading the Yahoo article and switching to the main site, after a couple of minutes all I could think was, "why can't I find a picture of the mystery frozen body they found?"
I think I need to get out more.
The "trash" isn't as bad as you make it sound. It's oxygen bottles left from a few decades of climbing. No one wants to carry extra weight, so they'd just drop them when they were empty.
The Nepalese government with private sponsors (like Nike) now pay cash money to anyone who brings a bottle off the mountain, so the sherpas are carrying down well more than are being left. Most of the huge caches of spent bottles have already been taken down by sherpas who want to get extra money...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
If you can get down to base camp, you'll have to pay the costs of your helecopter rescue to the Nepalese government (not cheap), but it costs $75k just to climb, so you probably have the cash. And there's usually decent medical support from one of the teams (though not always).
If you can't get down to camp, if you get lost or something, you may have folks come and look for you. But they probably won't find you. No one risks anything they're not willing to lose there...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Have you ever tried skiing?? Geeks LOVE skiing!! When Sierra Online started up, their big draw factor for getting programmers was that they could move down and ski as well as code. Skiing is a sport unlike any other.
No, the trash is as bad as he makes it sound.
The base camps are filthy: litter and human feces. It's freaking disgusting.
Really? Which team were you on when you went to Everest? While there was the occassional humorous bit of trash (frozen japanese candy from 1973) I didn't see any significant rubbish. And human feces is a strict no-no; every team has been responsible for carting it off the mountain for many years now.
I've got pictures of the sherpas carrying barrels of feces down from base camp -- not the guy you want to trip and spill his load!
Every team leaves a significant deposit as part of the climbing permit -- if they don't bring back their own trash and waste they lose the deposit. And you have to pay for a government official to accompany you for the entire time (not cheap) to verify compliance.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Why then did he not simply jump from a helicopter near the summit?
'cause a helicopter can't fly that high (atmosphere too thin) and he'd die in about 5 minutes because he's not adapted to the altitude. Even flying to base camp would kill you.
That's part of the appeal of Everest: nothing short of putting in the hard work makes it possible. No technology (currently) can make up for simply spending the time and energy and suffering to make it. There is no shortcut but to just do it.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Shouldn't everybody know by know that Everest is a mere hill, the only *mountain* is K2
it would be a hell of a lot harder to ski down for sure!
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
As Spacemoose says: "If it's not extreme, fuck you".
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
The popular spots in the Himalayas *are* getting worryingly filthy. I haven't been in tha Everest area (which btw isn't that hard to access; trekking to Everest Base Camp is hugely popular, it's only going up further that gets hard), but I've been in the Annapurna range, and I was apalled at the amount of junk that litters the paths there. The camp at Thorung Phedi (last stop before the Thorung La, at 4100m or so) is quite dirty. Of course, the view from there more than compensates for it ;)
This just makes me think of the time Homer fell down the Springfield gorge. Doh DOh Doh Doh DoH doh :)
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Because I thought it was neat.
Guy skis down Everest, after having lost two fingers the last time he tried it, with a camera on his head, sees a dead body on the way down, another person who thought they had it in them but didn't.
You can't tell me that isn't neat.
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Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
No, the trash is as bad as he makes it sound.
The base camps are filthy: litter and human feces. It's freaking disgusting.
If things are cleaner, it is only because there has been a strong effort over the past five years to clean up the mess of the previous thirty.
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You're right -- the popular trekking spots are fairly dirty, but the EBC is much cleaner than most anywhere else, in part because it's such a "special" place, and fairly remote compared to the standard trekking routes. The through-traffic isn't that bad, it's mostly the climbing teams who are there 24/7 for months on end that will generate trash, and they have a big financial incentive to not leave too much behind...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I snowboarded down it last winter.
So, yeah, first top to bottom, but not first.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0073340
The Man Who Skied Down Everest (1975)
Documentary
"A Japanese skier ultimately dreamed of literally skiing Mt. Everest. He planned to ski some 8,000 feet down an icy glacier at a 40 to 45 degree angle, from the 26,000 foot level near the summit. This documentary chronicles this incredible feat and the tremendous task of climbing Everest itself. The narrator reads from the diary that the skier personally kept."
I don't see why so many people complaning about this story. For me is one of the best ones in a long time. Not that the other weren't good, they were, but this is diferent from the usual stuff the we re read here.
:-)
Just consider the fact that this story doesen't have any of the usual slashwords attached to it (:cuecat, echelon, linux, windows, NSA, DVD e etc). Isn't this great?
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"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Tallest mountain in the world, and not only do we leave so much trash behind when we climb it that there are ongoing clean-up efforts to keep it from looking like the city dump, now we've got some guy skiing down it with a camera on his head.
I dunno, this just seems sort of disrespectful somehow.