Stonehedge

Most recent activity

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 15 hours, 38 minutes

  

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• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 18 hours, 2 minutes

  

  Base camp is at 6,000mish I think.

  It's a crazy story. Remember it being in the papers in 1996.

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 18 hours, 5 minutes

  

  I’d rather help try to save a life however futile than reach the top of a mountain for nothing but a sense of achievement.

  Well, this is the thing. Some people, a small number, do help. It's personal choice. I've never been higher than 5,000m so I have no direct experience but I suspect I'd be a pass on by sort of chap.

  For what it's worth, everybody is dying at that altitude. You're on a countdown timer and you don't know when yours will run out.

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 18 hours, 35 minutes

  

  I mean, I know a guy who won a gallantry award for conducting the highest ever helicopter rescue. From memory, the climbers were just over 7,000m, 1.8km below the top of Everest. To get their helicopter that high they had to strip seats and drain fuel to make it light enough.

  Edit: when I say know a guy, I mean he flew me in his helicopter once. Should really have said "met".

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 18 hours, 37 minutes

  

  Have you experienced hypoxia before? What you are suggesting just isn't possible in those conditions.

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 18 hours, 54 minutes

  

  An extra twenty minutes above 8,000m is enough to kill you. As we've seen in the last week.

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 19 hours, 54 minutes

  

  I'm really no expert on super high altitude climbing but I'm not sure there are any climbers strong enough to help somebody stuck above 8,000m. It's just not possible. I can only think of two climber mounted rescues on Everest, none above camp 3. I mean, helicopters can't even fly at that altitude.

  The way I see it is that no mountaineer should climb if they have the expectation that somebody else will risk their life to save them. You're on your own.

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 20 hours, 37 minutes

  

  A couple of the guides I use in the Alps are world class alpinists with several first routes on 8000m'ers in the Himalaya. Both find the idea of navigating the Everest circus a huge turn off.

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 22 hours, 58 minutes

  

  Hopefully Nepal will start a London Marathon style lottery for permits at some point. The numbers clearly have to be limited.

• Epic fail

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 1 day

  

  Vast majority climb in spring, most avoid summer due to monsoon snows and wind. Only a handful of nutters climb in winter.