Have you seen the movie Everest that came out in 2015? I just watched it on the cable. It’s based on the real events of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster and focuses on the survival attempts of two expedition groups. SPOILER ALERT: some didn’t survive. Also, the only reason you can refer to this event as a “disaster” is because people were involved otherwise the Mount is doing what it does, avalanches, storms, extreme cold, and pretty much can be referred to as a tuesday or thursday, or saturday, etc. This story is great fuel for my theory of when you should and should not take certain risks. If you have anyone directly dependent on you for any substantial reason then you shouldn’t be climbing the world’s tallest thing, nor should you go hiking in restricted areas by yourself and you shouldn’t go skydiving, those types of things where death is always close by. However, if you are single and not relied upon for financial support or someone’s care then off you go. In the movie I thought it really odd when things started to go south, hey, had they really gone south say to the Caribbean to get away they’d still be alive but they didn’t, anywho there is this moment where people at Base HQ start to hook up the doomed climbers with loved ones back home via phone. When one of the wives of the risk takers is alerted that her husband is in trouble on Mount E. she fires a call into the U S Embassy in Nepal and starts to give them shit about how her husband is in peril and they need to take action chop-chop. If I’m answering the phone at the Embassy and this woman starts yelling in my ear I would respond…”hey lady I didn’t tell your husband to shuffle way up into the sky, using aluminum ladders as a bridge over crevasses, no one put a gun to his head to do it.” By the way the ladder is the same type ladder that Clark Griswold uses in Christmas Vacation to staple his shirt to the gutter. I think this woman’s husband lived but had to have skin from his ass grafted to build him a new nose that was frozen off. I also love that sherpas run up and down the Mount all the time delivering reuben sandwiches. “hello guv’nr, I’ll pick you up on the way back, got to deliver these sandwiches.” You know what a lot of climbers like most about Everest?….the sandwiches. Certainly not making part of your ass your new nose.

Gunga, galunga
Garry