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Josef K. Sourdust
Jul 16, 2014

"To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Cojawfee posted:

I thought they weren't going to let people get permits for stupid things like "gayest polish person to die on Everest with a Scooby Doo butt plug" anymore.

F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-fascist!

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marsisol
Mar 30, 2010
If anyone has virtual reality cardboard for their smartphone (or the super expensive VR headsets), I highly recommend watching Capturing Everest on the Sports Illustrated website. I've only watched the first episode and it blew me away. There's some incredible scenes of Kathmandu and the trek through the Khumbu Valley (including some hair raising suspension bridge crossings). Can't wait to see the actual mountain scenes. I love the future.

ZombieLenin
Sep 6, 2009

"Democracy for the insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society." VI Lenin


[/quote]

Rotten Red Rod posted:

It's an addiction - no hyperbole, a literal addiction. They are addicted to the adrenaline of doing something so dangerous, and they have to one-up themselves each time or they don't get the high. And of course Everest is the "ultimate" for them. Watch that one video of the guy who wanted to wingsuit off of Everest - the dude is just listing off all his friends who have died wingsuiting, worrying about his wife and kids... And then decides to go do it anyway, because he's compelled to. His brain won't let him go.

They should read about K2 then. :toot:

In all seriousness though, I have no problem conceptually with those who want to push the envelope of human experience and risk their lives doing things incredibly dangerous.

Without people like this, there would be no astronauts, and in some sense I am tempted to say that part of our nature as a species is the statement George Mallory made about Everest: he wanted to climb it because it was there.

People wanted to go to the moon because it was there too, and I consider that one of the greatest achievement of human beings.

That said I feel like most of the deaths on Everest are the result of unprepared people with too much money--not in this case clearly--deciding the mountain is a bucket list check mark they need. That's not cool, that's stupid and also emblematic of how some people seem to have no regard not just for their own lives, but for their spouses and loving children that have to deal with the aftermath of their loved ones being utterly dumb.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Valley Uprising is supposedly about climbers and I guess in favor of them but they seem like assholes

PostNouveau
Sep 3, 2011

VY till I die
Grimey Drawer

ZombieLenin posted:

They should read about K2 then. :toot:

In all seriousness though, I have no problem conceptually with those who want to push the envelope of human experience and risk their lives doing things incredibly dangerous.

Without people like this, there would be no astronauts, and in some sense I am tempted to say that part of our nature as a species is the statement George Mallory made about Everest: he wanted to climb it because it was there.

People wanted to go to the moon because it was there too, and I consider that one of the greatest achievement of human beings.

That said I feel like most of the deaths on Everest are the result of unprepared people with too much money--not in this case clearly--deciding the mountain is a bucket list check mark they need. That's not cool, that's stupid and also emblematic of how some people seem to have no regard not just for their own lives, but for their spouses and loving children that have to deal with the aftermath of their loved ones being utterly dumb.

We went to the moon for a very good reason: sticking it to the Ruskies :patriot:

Rondette
Nov 4, 2009

Your friendly neighbourhood Postie.



Grimey Drawer
Some South African has just been found hiding in a cave, trying to avoid paying the summit fee. Now he has been fined double.

https://rusreality.com/2017/05/09/climber-a-stowaway-is-hiding-in-a-cave-on-mount-everest/

Paladine_PSoT
Jan 2, 2010

If you have a problem Yo, I'll solve it

Rondette posted:

Some South African has just been found hiding in a cave, trying to avoid paying the summit fee. Now he has been fined double.

https://rusreality.com/2017/05/09/climber-a-stowaway-is-hiding-in-a-cave-on-mount-everest/

Can we take up a collection to pay his fines and buy the permit as long as he live streams the attempt?

Grumio
Sep 20, 2001

in culina est
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/sports/polish-climbers-to-scale-deadly-k2-peak-in-winter.html

Surely this will go well

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

polish guys do not give a poo poo about being alive

I would blow Dane Cook
Dec 26, 2008

Their only equipment, a bottle of vodka.

djssniper
Jan 10, 2003


I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Their only equipment, a bottle of vodka.

Supplemental vodka at various camps

BaconCopter
Feb 13, 2008

:coolfish:

:coolfish:
I'm pretty sure K2 is the only eight-thousander that hasn't yet been summited during the winter... good luck suicidal Polish broskas.

gohuskies
Oct 23, 2010

I spend a lot of time making posts to justify why I'm not a self centered shithead that just wants to act like COVID isn't a thing.

This is a fantastic story, I'm really impressed. Great coverage of the winter challenges, the history of Polish winter mountaineering, good photos, really strong package put together on a subject that really doesn't get much good press attention. Glad NYT did this story. It's awesome.

Wasabi the J
Jan 23, 2008

MOM WAS RIGHT
Good luck Polish Bros.

Hoping for another suicidal success like the Polish line.

aardvaard
Mar 4, 2013

you belong in the bog of eternal stench

I thought Annapurna was the deadliest mountain?

gohuskies
Oct 23, 2010

I spend a lot of time making posts to justify why I'm not a self centered shithead that just wants to act like COVID isn't a thing.

CommunistPancake posted:

I thought Annapurna was the deadliest mountain?

Annapurna is deadly because it avalanches like crazy, which adds to the risk but not really to the technical difficulty. The standard routes on K2 have more difficult climbing than the standard routes on Annapurna, and K2 goes to a higher elevation. K2 also has worse weather, which is a much bigger deal in winter.

Rondette
Nov 4, 2009

Your friendly neighbourhood Postie.



Grimey Drawer
K2 is also the only mountain to gave a board game dedicated to it's bastardliness

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.
Climbing Annapurna is like climbing any other high mountain except you also have to play Russian Roulette on the way up.

nsaP
May 4, 2004

alright?
K2 has the ice serac bottleneck that makes it savage. Crossing a football field at a 60 degree sideways angle while huge hunks of ice regularly fall from above you.

BobHoward
Feb 13, 2012

The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull
This discussion got me googling some things and I just learned that there are a number of tall (7000m+) peaks in the Karakoram Range which have never been summited, such as Gasherbrum VI, and at least some of these other Karakoram mountains have even more technically difficult rock climbing than K2.

If they attracted as many attempts as K2, they probably wouldn't be as deadly, however. What makes K2 "The Savage Mountain" is combining risk factors: difficult/steep climbing, 8600m, exceptionally awful and rapidly changing weather, and sheer remoteness from civilization.

On that last point, the name "K2" is its original name, as far as anyone knows. The locals didn't know it existed before the British surveyed the Karakorams and gave them designations of K1, K2, K3, etc. Since it's so far from anything, if you get in serious trouble, you are probably going to die without anyone mounting a rescue attempt. The Pakistani military is the closest thing to a rescue service, but they don't have the type of helicopters needed to attempt high altitude rescue, and weather frequently prevents them from even being able to fly to the K2 base camp.

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.
K2 would be more fitting as the world’s highest peak, but the upside is that Everest keeps most of the dead Canadians and vegans from defiling K2.

Aphex-
Jan 29, 2006

Dinosaur Gum
Yeah the K2 serac is a thing of terror for sure:



Having to spend a couple of hours under that thing traversing a near-vertical ice wall all the while being over 8000 metres is just insane.

Ed Viesturs book 'K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain' is a really good account of the history of the mountain and the most memorable attempts to climb it, I definitely recommend reading it. It also includes the story of the 2008 disaster as shown in the documentary 'The Summit' which is equally as amazing.

Syncopated
Oct 21, 2010

Thank for the link, good article.

treasured8elief
Jul 25, 2011

Salad Prong

BobHoward posted:

exceptionally awful and rapidly changing weather

Alpinist posted:

A few months later on August 13, Hargreaves reached the summit of K2, but she was blown off the mountain with five other climbers on the descent by winds exceeding 260 miles per hour.

Maluco Marinero
Jan 18, 2001

Damn that's a
fine elephant.
Christ that's a helluva thing. I assume getting trapped in that is kind of a death sentence, even assuming you can find a cave or something to hole up in.

The Duchess Smackarse
May 8, 2012

by Lowtax

Should have worn a wingsuit

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.
I wonder what the wind chill is like.

Of course, the air is so thin up there that it only pushes with the pressure of like, 150 mph winds at sea level.

vortmax
Sep 24, 2008

In meteorology, vorticity often refers to a measurement of the spin of horizontally flowing air about a vertical axis.

Maluco Marinero posted:

Christ that's a helluva thing. I assume getting trapped in that is kind of a death sentence, even assuming you can find a cave or something to hole up in.

Platystemon posted:

I wonder what the wind chill is like.

Of course, the air is so thin up there that it only pushes with the pressure of like, 150 mph winds at sea level.

That's the difference between an F3 and F5 tornado. Either one's going to ruin your day if it hits you.

treasured8elief
Jul 25, 2011

Salad Prong

"[img posted:

https://fi.somethingawful.com/safs/titles/a7/52/00141420.0001.gif[/img]" post="472189497"]
That's the difference between an F3 and F5 tornado. Either one's going to ruin your day if it hits you.
I imagine tornadoes at least pass quickly, their storm lasted through the night

Trillian posted:

Edmund Hillary's son was on the same K2 expedition and turned back. He wrote this:

Peter Hillary posted:

Seven people died on K2.

What would it have been like up there? Imagine yourself in a large commercial freezer; its minus 40 degrees, there’s a 747 engine at one end of the freezer, blasting freezing air at you at 300, perhaps 400 kilometres per hour. Tilt the entire freezer on to a 50 degree angle, so that you are clawing with your ice-axes and the crampons on your boots to secure purchase. Bear in mind that at over 8,000 metres there is less than one third the amount of oxygen in the air as at sea level and your lungs are heaving with a wild rate of hyperventilation that is only sufficient to enable you to move at a snail’s pace; your circulation is impaired by the acclimatisation process and the cold is eating into your toes and fingertips. Now turn off the light.

That is what it was like on K2.

treasured8elief fucked around with this message at 14:44 on May 10, 2017

High Lord Elbow
Jun 21, 2013

"You can sit next to Elvira."
Pfft. At least it's a large freezer. Crybabies.

FrozenVent
May 1, 2009

The Boeing 737-200QC is the undisputed workhorse of the skies.
On the bright side, there isn't a single man-eating animal on K2.

Sono
Apr 9, 2008




FrozenVent posted:

On the bright side, there isn't a single man-eating animal on K2.

K2 is the single man-eating animal.

BobHoward
Feb 13, 2012

The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull
Heh. Wikipedia has this awesome quote about K2:

quote:

The surveyor's mark, K2, therefore continues to be the name by which the mountain is commonly known. It is now also used in the Balti language, rendered as Kechu or Ketu[13][16] (Urdu: کے ٹو‎). The Italian climber Fosco Maraini argued in his account of the ascent of Gasherbrum IV that while the name of K2 owes its origin to chance, its clipped, impersonal nature is highly appropriate for so remote and challenging a mountain. He concluded that it was:

quote:

... just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man – or of the cindered planet after the last.

girlwithgloves
Jun 5, 2011

Enjoy...wedding on Everest:

http://www.boredpanda.com/everest-camp-wedding-photos-charleton-churchill/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=awkwardfamily

Bugsmasher
May 3, 2004

Man tries to climb snowy Arizona mountain for free pizza — but suffers hypothermia, has to be rescued

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/world/tries+climb+snowy+arizona+mountain+free+pizza+suffers+hypothermia/13364963/story.html

quote:

A man had to be treated for hypothermia this week and rescued from a snowy northern Arizona mountain that he hiked up wearing only shorts and other light clothing in a quest for free pizza, authorities said.

He was trying to qualify for a pizza promised by a local business to anyone who could make it to a radio tower on Mount Elden overlooking Flagstaff. The elevation of the mountain is more than 2743 metres.

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

It would have been safer to just go find some goddamn dumpster pizza.

The Duchess Smackarse
May 8, 2012

by Lowtax
Or just wear some pants and a coat

Anya
Nov 3, 2004
"If you have information worth hearing, then I am grateful for it. If you're gonna crack jokes, then I'm gonna pull out your ribcage and wear it as a hat."
I can't remember if this has been answered, but I'm curious how the EverestNoFilter guys are able to use their phones in such cold weather. Do they have crazy cold proof satellite phones, great cases, or is it just luck that theirs work in suboptimal weather and my iPhone will die when it's -16F?

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

As far as I know they have just regular iPhones, but their other gear is probably designed specifically for all weather expeditions. They actually posted a few days ago about their complete setup, but I didn't make note of any of it and can't remember anymore.

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meet girls at the store
Nov 4, 2002

This is dumb as hell, but the only thing dumber are the 5,000 google alerts I keep receiving for this story with headlines like "Couple Marries Atop Mt. Everest."

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