115
Record-breaking mountaineer denies climbing over dying porter on K2
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
115 points (84.8% liked)
World News
32287 readers
1191 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Oh, come on now. In the worst year, Everest claimed 11 lives.
In the United States of America, on average, 22 people die from COWS.
Extreme sports, like mountain climbing, are dangerous, but not nearly as deadly as fishing (drownings).
I don't agree with op's opinion or yours, but you are really misusing statistics.
Way more people are exposed to cows and fishing than to Mount Everest, orders of magnitude more.
Or do you think a fisherman should perform comparable preparation to someone climbing to 8k meters?
Fishermen, yes, should be trained and pass a swimming test before heading on the water. These are preventable deaths with very easy solutions to prevent them.
And yes, fair enough that there are more people fishing than mountain climbing, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it causes more deaths than any other sport. Nobody is asking for fishing to be banned because it's too dangerous.
As for cow exposure, more people are exposed to dogs, like orders of magnitude more, yet cows still kill more people. So mere exposure doesn't paint a full picture.
People climbing mountains know that they might not make it back. It's a risk, just like scuba diving, skiing, mountain biking, surfing, or any other hundreds of things we do for sport, fitness, and entertainment.
Someone shouldn't say that mounting climbing should be banned for only a few deaths here and there, when you have literally any other sport causing more harm.
Statistically speaking, mountain climbing is likely safer than driving to the mountain. 😂
Honestly, I wouldn't care if these hikers themselves died en masse trying to go up Everest or whichever mountain alone. Let them keep doing it. It's like those people who jump or fall into the Grand Canyon—I don't think there should be barriers, if they are dumb enough to get too close and fall in then, in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, that's a shame. My concern is their exploiting people who are far poorer than them to accompany them on this unnecessary journey, which they may not even want to do, only to sometimes perish.
If fishermen die while doing a hobby, that's a tragedy but they chose to participate in it. But if they had paid some poor individual to help them in a dangerous fishing situation, at a lake or something, and this was a common practice because people with more resources wouldn't take such an unnecessarily risky job, then I would also say fishing at that location should just be banned. Not because of the fishermen who do it willingly, but because of the poor they exploit in the process and who die for their enjoyment or enrichment. And even if the fishermen were doing it for their own job, that would also be tragic and maybe people shouldn't fish in such a location if it were dangerous, but at least they didn't die for an entirely and totally pointless job.
Getting fish for others to eat is a valuable and meaningful job, shepherding vainglorious Europeans and Americans with a deathwish for no real reason is not a job worth dying for, in my opinion. But it just shows how these expeditions exploit the global poor to death for just the simple pleasures of the relatively wealthy.
Can't this be said of pretty much any tourist attraction in an underdeveloped country? Even guided expeditions (on land or by water) can be dangerous to the guide. Heck, even in North America you have tours of glaciers, which can be quite dangerous. We just call it regular work, not exploitation.
Just a few years ago, several people died on one of these tours..
I also think it's unfair to paint these people as rich snobs just out to fulfill some "unnecessary journey". Life is about adventure, and some people do more than just walk around their own neighbourhood trails.
But this is all in the realm of subjectivity, and I don't think there's a right or wrong side to this argument.
Well, yes, I think it can be said of any tourist attraction if the attraction is something as dangerous as this to the locals. But, luckily, most tourist attractions are not as dangerous so it's unnecessary to draw a picture of a slippery slope based off it.
But I don't think it's unfair to paint them as going on an "unnecessary journey", especially if they're dragging along local people who are too poor to have other options for work and may die on said journey. There are plenty of hikes and other things throughout the world that will not involve other people dying for them. Again, if they want to hike Everest because they are tired of their neighborhood trails, then I am all for them going on their life adventure alone or with their friends and family. I couldn't care less. And these are not scientific or exploratory expeditions. Nothing is gained by society nor even by the individual by completing this—other than their own personal ambition or potential increase of wealth related to some althetic records or whatever, which is not worth other people potentially dying over. They may not be rich snobs to us, but relatively speaking they are rich snobs to those locals. This is exactly rich snob behavior at its purest.
Sherpas tend to be highly skilled, genetically adapted to altitude and mountains, and are extremely well paid (life-changing).
You keep painting this picture like they dragged some homeless local off the street and forced him up a mountain. That's not fair, and it undervalues the role of a sherpa.
Again, you can say this about any activity if you don't enjoy adventure. Another hike might put you in danger of wild animals, or a traffic accident if touring by bus.
Tragedy happens, and fortunately, as far as mountain climbing goes, it's quite rare.
Just say you don't give a shit about their lives and be fucking done with it.
What? LOL
I'm all for keeping mountain climbing legal, but I don't think the logic behind this holds up.
Russian Roulette has a far higher rate of death in participants than fishing, but probably results in less yearly deaths. By this logic, Russian Roulette should be legal because it causes less overall harm.
Applying the same logic to your animal example - I found a study saying tigers kill on average 1-2 people in the US per year, less than 1/10th the number killed by cows. Does that mean people should be allowed to own tigers?
Are you saying that something designed to have a fatal outcome is comparable to something that does not, yet still results in a tremendous number of preventable death? Because that seems like a straw man.
Well... tigers are banned for a different reason, so that logic can't be applied. But let's take dogs, bully breeds... some places DO ban them because of how dangerous they are, even though cows kill more people.
But in the context of sport, people who understand and consent to the risks they pose to themselves should be permitted to do it. If not, then nearly every sport would be banned on the basis of them being too dangerous. Heck, cheerleading causes something like 20,000+ injuries a year. LOL
It's a bit misleading to compare total numbers instead of percentages. The most people to ever summit Everest in one year was 800 in 2018, and an average of 4.4 deaths occur per year to do it.
That's 0.55% mortality for this one mountain.
If you apply the same odds to any other sport they would probably be banned. Could you imagine if 9 NFL players died every year? It's roughly less than 1 per year at the moment I believe and that's still pretty bad.
Of course, the more participants, the lower the percentage goes down. But we are still only talking about a handful of deaths vs hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of deaths from other ordinary activities.
I'm sure it would, especially if the sport was accessible to everyone (which mountain climbing is not).
For us regular folks, I'm more concerned with how many people drown doing recreational activities, or die in car accidents doing non-important travelling, or die from legally accessible drugs and alcohol.
I think the outrage over “allowing” mountain climbing is misplaced. That's my opinion.