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Why Climbers Die On Mount Everest
Science Daily reports that researchers have conducted the first detailed analysis of deaths during expeditions to the summit of Mt. Everest. They found that
most deaths occur during descents from the summit in the so-called "death zone" above 8,000 meters, and also identified factors that appear to be associated with a greater risk of death, particularly symptoms of high-altitude cerebral edema. The big surprise that the data indicate those deaths aren't primarily from avalanches or falling ice, as had long been believed.
Nope... bends is caused by nitrogen bubbles forming in your bloodstream, due to diving or rising too quickly.
Not exactly. The bends come from fast decompression leading to gas bubbles within the body while the cerebral edema is an excess accumulation of water in the brain which comes from a leakage of fluid from capillaries (among other causes).
The higher you climb, the harder your lungs have to work to extract enough oxygen from the air in order to keep you alive. If you don't get enough oxygen, you don't die immediately. Your brain starts becoming less and less efficient, since it cannot produce energy anaerobically, like the rest of your body can.
Of course, this process is invisible to most people. Its comparable to how your brain isn't fully awake if you get woken up suddenly and feeling confused at the simplest tasks. Hypoxia also affects divers.
The leakage of fluid from the vessels in the brain is caused by the same hypoxia, since the blood vessels need energy as well.
The only solution is for climbers to take their own oxygen, or for someone to invent a mobile and low powered oxygen concentrator.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I have never seen anyone claim that the primary cause of death on Everest is avalanche or falling ice - I'm not sure where that fiction came from. It is common knowledge that the primary cause of death up there is directly related with complications from being in the dead zone, combined with the complications of frequent blizzards that hamper the attempts to get out of the dead zone. Climbers run out of oxygen and also get lost. Some have to be left behind by others because all are under distress and unable to help the straggler. It's a very deadly place to go and is foolish in that one in ten end up dying up there.
it's the "opposite" effect going on. At high pressures extra gas adds to your fluids, just like bubbles added to really cold pop under pressure. Warm it up and take off the pressure and you get fizz... only inside your brain which is generally not good.
In this case, the air pressure is so low the membranes that hold liquid don't work properly to hold it in... It's probably like a mild version of vacuum degassing used in manufacturing... in addition to the lack of oxygen.
Well, I'm not an aviator, nor did I stay in a hotel last night, but the 'ceiling' you're quoting looks to be for the as350-b3 loaded with over 900lb on top of the standard 'empty weight', and the youtube video (that shows it sitting on the summit) shows only one person in it. The flight to return back down was very short, so they probably didn't have much fuel sitting in it at the moment that it was at the top either...
Of course I could be wrong, but I'm convinced that they did it, with the machine they said they used...
links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocopter_Ecureuil
http://www.robertsaircraft.com/as350b3.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhYG-IgsRJ0&feature=related
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.