Mt. San Jacinto Outdoor Recreation

Yikes, that's horrible. The picture of the continuous line of climbers amazed me. Looks like it has turned into a zoo. Worse, with the quote saying that with the line like that, you had no choice but to carry on, I fear that some who might have turned around due to exhaustion will be swept along with the tide and end up dying on the mountain. Bad news all around. (BTW, cool Skyline pics with clouds in your other post!)

z

The Alan Arnette blog has analysis and discussion with more depth than the media coverage. For example, he blames some of it on the entry of new non-Western guide services with lower prices and standards.

http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2019/05/26/everest-2019-weekend-update-may-27-its-not-about-the-crowds/

He lists the deaths by name, nationality, guide service, cause of death, and where it occurred. It is an interesting list. The TV accounts I've seen only seem interested in American and British climbers, and never mention the guide services.

Nothing has changed since Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air in 1996.

RichardK wrote:Nothing has changed since Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air in 1996.

Certainly the underlying factors are the same. But if you read this part of Arnette's blog,

http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2019/05/17/too-many-deaths/

he talks about a shift from Western to non-Western (i.e., Sherpa owned and managed) guide services, with lower prices and standards.

I've only begun to explore Arnette's blog, but he seems very experienced and knowledgeable, with sensible opinions.

I knew two people who died on Everest, Ray Genet and Marty Hoey. Both were professional guides, and Genet was the king of guides on Denali. I don't believe they were guiding clients at the time, I think their deaths occurred before there were guided climbs on Everest.

I met Krakauer's father once, he and my (ex-) wife were on a guided climb in Pakistan, from which I was sidelined by a shoulder dislocated crossing a stream in the Wallace Creek area north of Whitney. Lew was a medical doctor who had introduced his son to mountaineering. But was becoming concerned that his son, now nineteen or so, seemed to have no interests but dangerous wilderness activities, and had already had a bad skiing accident.

One of my favorite mountaineering books is Krakauer's Eiger Dreams. If you have not read it, it is a collection of personal experience-based essays, a number of which had been published in magazines. Not pompous or sentimental, and with a touch of the gritty semi-dark semi-cynical humor which I remember and love. But which would probably be regarded as a bit insensitive today.

I'm trying to understand what's happening, here: The combination of high demand to summit Everest and unfavorable conditions led to this situation? People would be out a lot of money if they rescheduled for next year, so there's a huge crush to get it done in this particular window of opportunity?

At the risk of sounding like a hipster, it sounds like very high altitude Disneyworld, and that would certainly detract from the experience for me. It reminds me of a Reddit post by a fellow who suddenly decided he was going to summit Mt. Everest despite being out of shape - the community had to talk him down.