2y ago

Norwegian climber says it would have been impossible to carry injured Pakistani porter down snowy K2

apnews.com Norwegian climber says it would have been impossible to carry injured Pakistani porter down snowy K2

A record-setting Norwegian mountaineer has pushed back against claims that she could have done more to save a Pakistani porter who slipped off a narrow trail near the peak and died there after several hours.

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Of 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.
(I'm not saying they shouldn't have stopped to help; only that the likelihood of him surviving was near-zero.)
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.
- If 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. Are they mental, suicidal, or do they truly believe they are so awesome and everyone who died clearly was their inferior?
  
  Also 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?
  
  knowing 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 @dulce3tdecorum3st @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.
- Yeah I don’t understand the clamour. This sort of situation has happened many, many times. I remember reading about a guy dying in a cave near the Everest summit. Other climbers sat with him and shared water, comfort, but from that location, if he couldn’t move on his own, there was no way he was getting down. Also the numerous “landmark” bodies that the climbers pass right off the trail… there’s no safe way to remove them.
  I think people assume that you can just carry someone out on a stretcher or arrange a helicopter—but people are literally operating on bleeding edge of oxygenation and helicopters can’t get up their for the same reasons… you aren’t going to be able to remove an incapacitated person who needs total physical support from others to move.
  You could say, well it’s fucked up that people are paid to support these climbs, because they need the money, and there’s some validity to that, but in that case it’s not that different from something like deep sea welding or being in a combat unit of a military, etc.
- One in four climbers on K2 does not make it back.
  This is a very misleading statement and the stats just don't back you up.
  Look at the number of people on K2 in the pictures and video taken on the day in question. Yet only one person died.
  You are confusing climbing with summiting and you are including numbers from the 1930s.
  
  Thanks for pointing this out.
  Details here if anyone is interested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_on_eight-thousanders#K2
  This is the stat the top-level comment is misinterpreting:
  As of February 2021, 377 people have completed a summit of the mountain, while 91 have died trying, a staggering 4:1 ratio.

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