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A Geek On Everest
mysterious_mark writes "Recently I was recruited by Altitude Films to be the IT geek for a filming expedition to the north side of Mount Everest. I have written an account of my experience. It is a tale of high latency, low bandwidth, blown hard drives, and frozen fingers. Summit day is June 14th. See the expedition's site for the overall picture (caution: total Flash site)."
And depending on the make and model, the second failure mode, the batteries bursting into flames, will keep you warm on those chilly Everest nights.
It is safe to say that climbing Everest has no more significance now than parking your car. Every year, a cavalcade of people charge up the mountain, to the point there are actual people jams at the approach to the summit. Ho hum.
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I liked the article, but I really wanted to hear more about the particular problems he experienced with the equipment, and what (if any) type of workaround he used to get them back into shape. In such extreme weather, he HAD to have more failures or problems other than that one hard drive. On the other hand, he didn't go above a certain altitude, and maybe everything was fine and dandy. For that, I can think of the ads now: "ABC Corp's hard disks survived EVEREST - put them to work in your demanding data center today!"
df -h
Yet as an Elite IT expert, he forgets to buy Tough books that can handle the cold and conditions but tries to use regular laptops.
According to the article, Flash is used for video footage because it compresses well and their outbound bandwidth is tiny.
There may be better ways of doing it, and I'm not sure why the whole site has to be Flash, but the decision wasn't completely arbitrary.
Beats previous 2006 record of 480 summits. Gets pretty crowded on top when the 1-2 week weather window opens in late May. This year the window was unusally long, so more peole had second chances. Theres a second, much smaller season in October for a handful of remaining summits.
The factor that greater increased climbers was the entry of cut-rate Chinese climbing companies from the north. Nepal permits cost about $10K per climber, total expedition is $20K - $60K. China cost be below $10K, thus attracting hordes. 2006 had the second highest death total (8), mostly blamed on the shortcuts and inexperience of Chinese companies. I saw (6) so far in 2007.
I know I posted on Slashdot from Everest back in 1999, I suspect it was frist. It probably had nothing to do with Everest -- it's a place with lots of hurry up and wait (and I do know they rejected my story on our mission, bastards!).
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Too high for a regular helecopter, but you could easily design one that would get to Everest easily. You'd basically need the powerful jet engines driving a larger than usual rotor. Not difficult really.
NASA is even looking at helecopters for Mars because the thin atmosphere makes fixed wing aircraft difficult to design. Flying fixed wing on Mars is easy, but the problem is that the speed of sound is very slow in the thin air. And, because the air is thin, you've got to fly fast to generate lift. This means that on Mars you end up landing your plane at higher than Mach 1, a difficult proposition. A helecopter just needs a large rotor spun very fast, and you don't have to land with such a large horizontal speed.
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From personal experience, my 3rd gen iPod had hard drive failure at 4500m on my first trip in that area. Which was disappointing. I did however manage to get it working again back at home as long as I only half filled the drive. On a trip to get to Everest via the 1922 reconnaisance route, I decided to take it again. Managed to have it working at 5100m with power from a solar panel. 'Voodoo Chile' in the lower Kharta valley was quite an experience. Result - iPod developed a few more glitches. Altitude related probably, but it was also bumped around in the cold on the back of yaks in a bag fairly extensively. Flash memory based mp3 players apparently do well at altitude. The hard drives for iPods were rated with a maximum operating altitude of 4000m.
I like Apple. They make nice stuff which works most of the time.