I think it looks awesome.  An adventure of a lifetime for some people.  As the world gets smaller and smaller (figuratively), it won't be too long and there won't be any adventures left.

I've got not comment on the ethics of what happened here though.  I know absolutely nothing about mountaineering.

Sure looked like a body tumbling end over end at a high rate of speed to me...   Either way it's sobering to see and puts missteps in that environment in raw perspective.

that is a risk you take mountaineering.  carrying another person down the mountain is physically impossible and there are lots of dead bodies up there to prove it.

What kind of clothing is heavy enough and ridged enough to fall like that? What kind of man sized equipment do you think they have up there?

It's spinning too fast and the scale seems wrong.  It looks like a mitten.

I agree with you, and I see tons of dropped gloves, mittens and ski poles underneath a chairlift.  Whoever that is, is going to have a bad day without a spare.

I get that the optics to the general public look bad, but what are people expecting this specific woman to do?

What is a 120lb woman going to do to save that man? Direct her team High Altitude Porters (not sure if K2 actually has Sherpas) to risk THEIR lives to bring down a lost-cause? Should she have put more lives at risk for that guy? Anyone going to these mountains knows very well that rescue is not a guarantee and can cost many other people their lives.

It sucks all-around and it doesn't look good, but I don't see how there was a "right" choice to be made. Maybe everyone would be happier if her summit selfies were somber.

I am betting it's a mitten or some piece of outerwear that was temporarily removed and wasn't secured.

Doesn't look like a tumbling human body at all.

There is no doubt in my mind that what we are looking at is a person tumbling end over end down the mountain.  

Is it wrong that I hope the person was already dead at that point?

Kind of off topic: given how thin the air is, would a drone need to be modified to fly at those altitudes? Say you had a dji mavic or whatever. Could you fly it while you’re at 26,000 feet?

This is just like the Maui fire thread where all the Billy Badasses would have stopped the car in the middle of the firestorm to check on the woman lying dead in the street.  Nevermind the superheated temperatures and risk to everyone else in the car.

Upon further research, it appears that a climber did in fact fall here moments before, but was not captured on video.  This was in fact a glove that was tumbling afterwards.


ETA:  Original footage here, skip to about 2:25ish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-dMVvvIt8M

Guy who shot the video says it was a piece of equipment.  I didn't see that in the comments for myself, but I believe it.

A cheap off-the-shelf drone likely wouldn't fly at 25k feet.  It could be a fixed wing drone.  If it was a copter drone it was likely modified to fly at such high altitude.  

ETA: there is a guy on youtube who flies crazy drones and spent some time at an everst base camp flying, isn't that around 20k feet?

If you go down near the peak of Everest, you are dead.
If you try to rescue a down climber, you die too.
The harsh reality is that people are already at their limit and can barely move themselves, hence the Rainbow Valley.

Just another edition of Outrage Porn.

Walking over a body in the death zone is not exactly like walking over a body at the Starbucks in the hotel lobby.

Nothing to see here but REEEE.

Yeah, the fwd:fwd:fwd video is compressed so heavily that you can't see the snow slide and DCT artifacts look like arms flailing out to the side.  The videos all start to look the same with the crap compression.  Others so similar to this where the original quality clearly shows an unarrested climber sliding by.  Maybe a tethered jumar tumbling with him.

Westerners have been left to die as well on 8000 meter peaks.

It's tragic. Sherpa value has risen over the decades.

They need rocket assisted auto-steerable parachutes.    Fire the rocket and the parachute yanks you off the mountain and glides you gently down to basecamp.

Between the stupid tip jar, their cheap pre-prepped re-heat food, inaudible name shouts for your order ... I dunno, man, dead body or not in that doorway, I'm kind of in the mood to just get the fuck out of there, sometimes.  Maybe even turn back towards the counter after I've stepped over him, throwing my hands up in the air while walking backwards, and proclaiming, "It's what my people would do on Everest!  Don't judge my culture, you intolerant, judgmental fucks!" All the while, trying not to spill my overpriced latte.

never mind

You can kind of tell by the conversation also, him asking if everyone is okay in a comforting tone as the object is flying by, seems they are getting sit reps after the event.

There's another video of people sliding down another mountain and the people were in a panic as they watched it happen. And it's also easy to see they are people, regardless of the scale of the mountain.

There is plenty of valid criticism for the woman in question.

If someone is going to go after Nims Purja's accomplishment of climbing all 14 8000m peaks in a single season, it should be done without helicopters, as a weakness in Purja's feat was using a helicopter to jump basecamps or drop into a starting position on some peaks in the Everest massif.  Obviously, Purja was tired and running up against the limits of what's humanly possible, so the offer the helicopter at this limited point in the endeavor would have been hard to pass up, maybe.  Or, maybe he was happy to leave an opening for somebody to attempt it all in better style: I want you to do this in better style than I did; I want you to succeed; let me help you do it better. Who knows.

But, what Purja probably never envisioned, was that somebody would exploit the one weakness in his accomplishment, and employ that weakness on every peak she went after.

It's stunningly grotesque.

She not only used helicopters to move from basecamp to basecamp, but she used them to stock high camps up to various Camp 3 locations on mountains.  Not only using the helicopters for stocking the high camps, but using the helicopters for dropping off Sherpas at various Camp 3 locations to prep her routes.

Look, I'll be the first to happily say that all climbs are started in car, or on an airplane, somewhere.  Even Kropp's renown self supported ascent of Everest has a bit of an asterisk, because while he was genuinely on his own, he was using lines and routefinding through the Khumbu established by the various guiding outfits through hard fought work and labor.  Helicopters are used, sure; they can shave weeks off of an objective, and greatly reduce the risks of trying to get a float plane into the small alpine lakes of dead-end mountain cirques.

But, Harila's helicopter exploits seem beyond the pale.  Especially to "break" a record.

Isn't that kind of a normal occurrence?

If you go down noones typically going to pick you up?

Regardless, the tards in this thread that think the guy could have been saved should watch the whole thing. They don’t get to the “bottle neck” until 29:00. There was a 0% chance that guy was making it off the mountain.

I thought it was well understood that after a certain point, if you go down, no one can help you.

I'm envisioning being slumped down, dying in peace.  The view.  The wind.  The peace.

And then some do-gooder trudges up, puts some earbuds in my ears, and plays that I Get Knocked Down song.  Ostensibly to cheer me up.

And then I angrily muster the last of my strength and shove myself off into the void.

Beast

A man like Nims doing it in 6 months was a feat, her doing it in 3 did have me scratching my head. The helicopter use explains it. I did not know that

25 people went up K2 and 11 died in just a single day back in 2008.  The climbers and porters know the risk they accepted and they also know what happens if they go down.


https://www.insider.com/k2-disaster-2008-11-mountain-climbers-die-in-one-day-2019-5

I thought it was pretty much a given that there is no rescue on these types of climbs as an attempted rescue would end in more deaths.

Nims ran the show.  That's a huge difference between him and this woman.

Whatever records were set in this most recent endeavor are Lama's.

Nims was at the helm of his own show.  He was in the decision making role, and as trite as it may sound, the strains of command are brutally real in the mountains.

Though she was step for step with Lama, I don't think she was in a decision making role.  That makes for a huge difference.   It's so hard to explain, perhaps impossible, but it is such a real phenomenon.  Decisions, indecision, it's exhausting on a big stage.  Just about any stage, really.

She says the man who lost his life didn't appear to have proper equipment for the task, maybe not even proper skill.  

She talks about team member rope positions, so it makes me think this guy was somehow part of her team.  If that's the case, and she's claiming a record, then she needs to own his death, because his visible lack of preparedness is on her.  Her.

Equally shared decision making is a fundamental pillar of climbing bona fides.  If you aren't sharing decision making and sharing lead risks, a professional certification organization is going to sound just like a DI shouting "zero!" after every one of your supposedly awesome pushups you've knocked out.

From the comments:



Plus from the comms it sounded like a climber had asked "everyone okay up there?" which was answered affirmatively.

Everyone in this story is an asshole for different reasons.

must be situational ethics day today eh?

CPR? (0:39)

Attached File

?? Warning : Disturbing Video
Another video of Pakistani HAP Muhammad Hassan's dead body at the K2 Bottleneck.
He struggled for 3 hours hanging upside down to a rope  & no one helped him but instead continued for summit.
Companies wins, humanity lost#Karakoram pic.twitter.com/htyIe6ye84

— The Northerner (@northerner_the) August 6, 2023

This link has more info
Link

An important part of the story


Dude was a lower level camp porter that decided he could make money by pretending he was a mountain sherpa despite not having the experience or equipment while ignoring warnings. IMO dude was a likely goner as soon as he made that decision and put everyone else at risk.

Stepping over/around someone that cannot be helped or is already dead is part of climbing these mountains. Dead people are used as landmarks when navigating in some cases.

And no its not as simple as just everyone pausing what they are doing in a very precarious position and saving him. Where they were at on the mountain makes it a recovery mission at best. Even when they do trash hauls or body recovery on Everest takes months of planning and weeks of staging supplies in a very narrow weather window.

3 hours upside down.

Sounds great.

Nobody helped him?  That's incongruent with the photographs.  You can see where he was hauled/roped back up to the broken-trail in the photos.  "Broken-trail" being a colloquialism.  It probably doesn't look like much in the photographs, because how on Earth is it possible that moving a guy 15 or 20 feet is so arduous?  But, that just it.  You really aren't on Earth anymore at this point.

Sadly, yes.  You can be surrounded by the strongest, the boldest people on Earth, and you'll just get a headshake about retrieving/moving/finding a body.  Eight thousand meters?  Shit., this will happen at eight thousand feet.

Yep.  There is literally nothing you can do for someone.  It's part of the deal.

I've summited a few mountains in my younger days. Nothing near that obviously and only one required climbing gear for the last 100 feet.

Small groups and I still don't see the appeal of having someone else carry you literally and figurevly at times. Also don't see the appeal of stepping over dead bodies on the way and way down to say "I did it" and a short time of viewing.

from what i understand is when you are way up on those big mountains there isn't much someone can do if you have an emergency. lots of bodies on these mountains.

Once in the Death Zone you can expect no help unless another team believes that they can actually save you without killing themselves in the process.

Ah, modern culture, everything must be attacked and destroyed.  Outrage culture at its finest.

K2 isn't a mountain that you just lollygag up one day on a nature hike because you feel like it and think it'll be a pretty trip.  It is an exceedingly complex and technical climb, far outstripping Everest in difficulty and danger.  It takes months of preparation, a two week long hike just to get to basecamp, multiple trips up and down from the first three camps for acclimatization purposes, and then a final summit push from camp four on the shoulder of K2.  

The path through the bottleneck is probably the most dangerous part, as there is a massive ice serac hanging above you at all times, so relative speed is imperative there.  Plenty of climbers have been swept off of the mountain by ice falling from the serac.  You do not want to spend any more time than is necessary to traverse this part.  Fixed rope has been sheared there, also by ice, leaving climbers without rope on the descent, which statistically is the most dangerous part of a K2 conquest.  Attempts have been made to rescue people from this area on previous summit attempts, and just about every single one resulted in not only the injured person dying, but multiple others as well.  The disastrous 2008 season comes to mind, where 11 climbers perished on K2, some because they attempted to save or rescue other climbers.

It is a well known fact that if someone goes down above the death zone, 8,000 meters, unless they can descend under their own power, they're dead.  It is also well known that those people are beyond saving, and to attempt to do so will result in more death.  Every single person going up K2 knows the risks, and if they decide to continue, accepts those risks.  The Mountain itself also accepts those risks, and will gladly take your life from you, because up there, no one else can help you.

Edit: Forgot to mention that in the 8000'er and Alpinist community, there is understanding that if you're climbing on fixed rope, and you go down, you are expected to let go of the rope and arrest your own fall, because if you don't let go, you're going to bring people with you.  Arrest your own fall, or accept your death, those are your choices.

What color are his boots? I need to update my K2 map.

Brutal lol

Let go of the rope?  What's that going to do?  You may not be tied into the rope, but you are connected into it in one manner or another.

I like the one from earlier this season with the body sliding right past a group and then some dumb bitch panicking and screeching about to get herself killed.


https://youtube.com/shorts/h8RrAyCsEQI?feature=sharea