Bernie EcclestonedNorwegian climber says it would have been impossible to carry injured Pakistani porter down snowy K2
daisy lazarusOf course it would have been impossible. One in four climbers on K2 does not make it back. This is a non-story, as tragic as the loss of life may be. 25% mortality rate. You have better odds rolling a die for your life. Punintended.
DEATHS ON K2
K2 is considered one of the most difficult climbs. For every four climbers attempting to summit K2, one climber dies. In comparison one in every 20 attempting to climb Mount Everest dies. As of June 2018, only 367 people have completed the ascent of K2 and 86 had died trying. As of 1995 113 people reached the summit of K2 and 48 died. In 1995 seven people were killed in brutal storm that raged for nine days. Thirty kilometers away a rock climber froze to death in a hanging tent. In August 2008, eleven climbers died over two days (See Below), In a 1953 attempt, Art Gilkey was killed, either in an avalanche or in a deliberate attempt to avoid burdening his companions.
JohnEdwaIf it somehow guaranteed your success it would be safer to play a round of russian roulette at the base camp before you begin your climb as that has only one in six chance of killing you. That's how crazy your odds of success on the climb sound like.
Yet they all know the statistics and the risks, and go do it anyway.
Yet they all know the statistics and the risks, and go do it anyway.
grahamszAlso I can understand taking that risk for yourself. Certainly it's way outside my comfort zone, but I'm not going to tell someone else they can't do something dangerous. But how can you go out and hire people to help you knowing there's a 25% chance they'll be giving their lives for you?
But how can you go out and hire people to help you knowing there’s a 25% chance they’ll be giving their lives for you?
I mean, they want to be hired. That’s how a lot of people there make a living. They are aware of the risks.
iquanyin@bernieecclestoned @dulce_3t_decorum_3st @JohnEdwa @grahamsz
wouldn’t it be cool if the took all the drive and energy they have for climbing a rock into making a world where people don’t have to hire out and risk their lives just to feed their family?
I think it would be better if everyone climbing a mountain does so out of their own free will and because they want to, and not out of financial necessity.
But that is something for the local governments to fix and not the responsibility of mountaineers.
But most mountaineers get by without having to hire people to carry their shit for them. Certainly people here in Colorado use guides from time to time, but i've never heard of anyone using a porter. Maybe i'm ignorant, but it seems like mountaineers only use porters in the himalayas because they are cheap and disposable.
Perhaps if you can't summit a mountain without another human to carry your equipment then it should be ok to not summit that mountain.
If we’re talking about high altitude peaks, like the 14 peaks, most people that summit do it “expediation style”, which always includes sherpas and porters. Only very few people have accomplished climbing one of the 14 peaks “alpine style”.
Thanks for the terminology - that makes it easier!
Only very few people have accomplished climbing one of the 14 peaks “alpine style”.
I'm quite ok with that.
If the rockies were 28k instead of 14k then I still don't think there'd be a situation where we hire poor villagers from the outskirts of Denver to put their lives on the line. I really believe the high peaks are summited expedition-style because the poverty makes that practical, which in turn allows many more people to reach the top
I’m quite ok with that.
But climbing with an expedition is much more safe. There is nothing wrong with that inherently.
The real porblem starts when mountaineering just becomes a sick kind of tourism. Where people that are totally unprepared hire companies that will figurativly just carry you up a mountain like everest. I mean idiots like this..
I think I take more exception with the uneven make-up of the expedition team. If 4 americans want to form a expedition to summit K2 then I applaud that, all of them are committed to what they are doing and are choosing to take an extreme risk with no coercion. But when half the team makers are living in literal poverty and are only choosing to take the risk because they have few other options, that seems kinda messed up.
That woman… how stubborn can you be?
How can you not realize the insanity of continuing when what takes others 20 minutes takes you 6 hours.
Could it have been some form of suicide?
Unless you have no hobbies and no free time You can lead by example and show them.
Sure - and i'm sure I could find people who'd play a game of russian roulette for $1M but it'd be massively unethical to hire people to do that.
So there's obviously some line - as a society we consider it ethical to hire forestry workers or deep sea fishermen even though they have a significantly higher risk of death that most other professions. I think a 25% death rate is just unethical in the extreme, even Everest is something like 1%.
Everest appears to be 5%. Where would you draw the line, and how would you justify it?
I have no idea, but hiring someone for a job that has a 1 in 20 chance of killing them seems fundamentally immoral - especially given the massive financial imbalance.
It's certainly a good philosophical question though
Yeah, taking it to the extreme, the same logic applies to delivery guys on scooters and motorcycles. There’s definitely no good answer, except maybe that they accepted the risk
Looking at it more, there seems to be an entire field of Risk Ethics associated with this.
Still the most dangerous job in the US is a Commercial Fisherman with a risk of death of 132 per 100,000. That's a very long way from the risk of dying on Everest or K2.
livusknowing there's a 25% chance they'll be giving their lives for you?
There isn't. The person above is using a misleading stat, based on a misunderstanding of the stats.
Look at how many people are in the photos of the climbers all stepping over Mohammed Hassan here.
In common sense terms if this bizarre "25% die" stat were real, at least a dozen of them would have died that same day.
@grahamsz
@bernieecclestoned @dulce_3t_decorum_3st @JohnEdwa
Yes, that's obviously taking the lifetime K2 deaths and dividing by the summit attempts - though actually I get 19% in that situation. However we really dont have enough data to form a good confidence interval there - it's possible we've had a lucky few years or maybe we've got better at deciding when to make the summit attempts.
But it doesn't really change my point. There's some threshold where it seems fundamentally immoral to hire someone for a job that has a good chance of killing them. Mountain porter on k2 or everest is a higher risk job than "astronaut" without the same glory that comes with the space faring job title. Even if the chance of death is 1 in 200, I still think its immoral to take advantage of someone who's so desperate for work that they'll overlook it.
Definitely. I may not agree with your stats but I agree that it's immoral to take advantage of people's poverty - in this case he was motivated by his mother's medical bills - to make them risk their lives, especially given it's in order to help do a recreational activity that has no use.