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John Duffield
Mountain climber
New York
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May 27, 2014 - 12:33pm PT
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I've heard, they've brought down some of the bodies. By helo or otherwise, I'm not sure.
Here's a photo of them burning bodies on the Ganges. Fitting, given the glacier that gives the river it's rise, flows right by the big mountain.
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Stewart Johnson
climber
lake forest
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May 27, 2014 - 12:34pm PT
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Stewart is my avatar , stinky
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 27, 2014 - 02:15pm PT
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While the river that flows from Everest's flanks does indeed end up in the Ganges, the headwaters for that river originates with water flowing out of the Gangotri Glacier in northwest India.
The goddess who lives on Everest is not the mother goddess of the earth as translated into English either, but one of five godess sisters, of whom she is not the most important.
:)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 27, 2014 - 04:03pm PT
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Actually, she's the goddess of wealth. Her more important big sister is the goddess of long life.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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May 27, 2014 - 04:09pm PT
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Actually, she's the goddess of wealth
How a propos, she certainly is to the corrupt bureaucrats, n'est ce pas?
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steve shea
climber
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May 27, 2014 - 04:27pm PT
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Jan, is Jomo Tseringma one of the five? AKA Gauri Shankar.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 27, 2014 - 06:47pm PT
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Miyolangtsama is the goddess of wealth for everyone, but she has especially favored the Khumbu Sherpas. That's one of the reasons the death of 16 of them in a few minutes was thought to be a reason to pause for reflection. Obviously the goddess is angry about something.
Here's a thanka with the five goddesses plus a Tibetan saint namred Milarepa. Tashi Tseringma is riding a snow lion in the center, her centrality and size indicating her importance and Miyolangsama is the yellow one riding a tiger in the upper left.
Tseringma Khangri is the Tibetan name for the mountain known to the Hindus as Gauri Shankar.
And here's a close up of one of my favorite depictions of Tashi Tseringma.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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May 27, 2014 - 09:28pm PT
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Question concerning this discussion and others.
If you have no interest in Everest, then why do you care how it is climbed?
Good question.
I have no interest in Everest and I care deeply how it is climbed.
Reason being that for the big world of non climbers out there, Everest is all they know, and Everest climbers the only type of climber they ever hear about.
Therefore, what happens on Everest (fights, deaths, ladders, sherpas, helicopters, money, more deaths, etc) represents climbing to the non-climber.
In the US, non-climbers make up the huge majority of those who run and visit our national parks and other federally-owned climbing areas. Non-climbers own lots of land that we climb on. Non-climbers are the people who talk to the decision-makers about how user-groups should be given access/privileges (or not).
So, I can with good reason say that I care deeply about Everest. What happens up there affects all of us.
Currently, I regard the guides' customers as non-climber fakes. The scene is an embarrassing corruption of anything meaningful and worthy about being a real climber.
I worry that the selfish attitudes and tragedies we hear about up there will affect non-climbers' attitudes toward us real, genuine, everyday climbers. We will be viewed less are David Brower/John Muir nature-loving wilderness-visiting athletes and more as self-centered, entitled, ruthless, exploitative as#@&%es.
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Fall Guy
Mountain climber
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May 27, 2014 - 10:55pm PT
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I worry that the selfish attitudes and tragedies we hear about up there will affect non-climbers' attitudes toward us real, genuine, everyday climbers. We will be viewed less are David Brower/John Muir nature-loving wilderness-visiting athletes and more as self-centered, entitled, ruthless, exploitative as#@&%es.
My personal obversation as I've watched the behavior of those who Crunch calls "real, genuine, everyday climbers" is that to a large extent they are pretty much what he detests in Everest climbers - namely they're self-centered, entitled, ruthless, exploitative as#@&%es. Any non climber who happens to stumble upon ST forums would have a hard time coming to any other conclusion.
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Degaine
climber
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May 28, 2014 - 04:17am PT
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Stewart Johnson wrote:
Even if a difficult route were accomplished the descent would involve
stepping over all those non talented individuals who dont belong there.
Bold by me.
What does talent have to do with anything? Perhaps you are referring to levels of self-sufficiency and experience?
Crunch wrote:
Currently, I regard the guides' customers as non-climber fakes.
Bold by me.
Who gets to draw the line between climber/non-climber? Fake/real?
Where do you draw the line?
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Degaine
climber
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May 28, 2014 - 04:22am PT
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donini wrote:
All the lay public cares is that you "climbed" the peak....the particular route is irrelevant, and climbing Everest plays to the general public NOT to the real climbing community.
Bold by me.
I would write that "summit fever" plays to the "real" climbing community in the US as well, or at least the US climbing/mountaineering media. I know of a few French climbers who recently put up very technical and difficult new routes in the Himalaya, routes that topped out on a ridge line for example, that interested the American climbing/mountaineering media little since the did not climb to an official summit.
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steve shea
climber
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May 28, 2014 - 10:08am PT
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Thanks for the primer Jan. Where does Jomo come from on the Tibetan Map? And Jobo across the valley, Menlungtse? Female and male I guess?
I was fortunate enough to visit Milarepa's Cave.It is up the road from Nylam, on the trade route. Very interesting stuff. We met Tibetan pilgrims there from all over.
On another note we found a bombed out Nunnery in side canyon of the upper Rongbuk. There were kilns where the nuns made the highly desirable and highly illegal icons passed to fellow Tibetans. In Lhasa, at the time you could still be arrested for passing icons. '86 Bombed by Mao btw.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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May 28, 2014 - 11:16am PT
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Crunch wrote:
Currently, I regard the guides' customers as non-climber fakes.
Bold by me.
Who gets to draw the line between climber/non-climber? Fake/real?
Where do you draw the line?
Degaine, there's no line. There is a spectrum. At one end is Stephen Venables, Ed Webster, Paul Teare, Robert Anderson. They picked their own line, they found and dealt with incredible levels of risk, technical difficulty, hardship. They valued the process, the challenge, the uncertainty. Huge props to those guys.
At the other end is the modern client/customer peak bagger who wants to summit all the Seven Summits. They care nothing about the mountain itself. They are content to ascend ropes, fixed by others, the entire way. Or use a helicopter, or gangs of sherpas to "assist" and carry everything. They are careless/greedy enough to arrive at the summit at 6:20 PM, endangering themselves and the lives of the sherpas who accompanied them. They pay other people to work hard and even die, just so the client/customer can get to the top.
Guiding Everest did not start out this way. At first, there was uncertainty, risk, clients would often be turned back. But not so much any more.
Where to draw the line? That's for each of us to decide.
EDIT: Added Paul Teare to the 1988 expedition team.
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Scott Patterson
Mountain climber
Craig
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May 28, 2014 - 12:12pm PT
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They are careless/greedy enough to arrive at the summit at 6:20 PM, endangering themselves and the lives of the sherpas who accompanied them.
Um, plenty of "real climbers" do that too (and on many other mountains besides Everest). More Sherpa by percentage were lost on "real climbing" expeditions.
In fact some of the "real climbers" have even intentionally caused death or injury to Sherpa. Luckily the percentage of them doing so is small.
They pay other people to work hard and even die, just so the client/customer can get to the top.
Same is true of the "real climbers".
So in your eyes, it's perfectly OK for real climbers to cause death and injury to Sherpa so they can get to the top, but somehow not OK for guided climbers?
I assume that you must be completely ignorant on the history of Himalayan mountaineering.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 28, 2014 - 12:50pm PT
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Steve-
I envy your visit to Milarepa's cave! The Buddhist nun I lived with in Rolwaling had spent 3 months there when she was younger, ringing a bell, saying a mantra and doing a prostration - 100,000 times!
You are right to surmise that Jobo and Jomo are male and female. Jomo and Chomo mean female goddess and Jobo and Chobo, male god. They are different ways of transliterating Tibetan to English, is all.
In this case it is Jomo Tseringma and Jobo Garu, erroneously renamed Melungtse by Chris Bonnington. It seems he probably didn't have a copy of Schneider's map to the area at the time he climbed there, and that was the only good one available.
The actual Melungtse is a small 20,000 ft + (sorry I don't have my map with me) mountain overlooking Melung or Menlung Pass between Menlung Valley and Rolwaling. Menlung Valley of course runs into Rongshar.
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steve shea
climber
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May 28, 2014 - 01:11pm PT
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When there to climb Menlungtse we did a number of those small peaks to acclimate. All on the ridge between Jomo Tseringma and the Menlung La. We also skied from below the north side of the Menlung La to the valley. Bonnington was there with the Norwegians in '86 maybe.
I checked the map. Looks like point 6257m. Chekigo, to the east of the La. Pt 5700m to the west.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 28, 2014 - 01:22pm PT
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Randisi, you're right unless all that was just a prelude to meditation which can be done anywhere.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 28, 2014 - 01:30pm PT
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Steve,
Chekigo which means religion opening door since it is near the pass that connects two sacred valleys, has become a popular peak to climb now and can be done without an expedition permit. In fact almost a dozen peaks in Rolwaling around 6,000 m. have been given that designation in the past month.
You may have been the only group to have climbed it from the north side?
If you skied down the north side of Menlung La, you must have had better conditions than when I was there. We had a one inch crust on top of several feet of powder and had to crawl like crabs the last 500 feet to keep from sinking up to our waists.
When we got to the top, there was a beautifully made igloo about 100 ft. from the summit down on the Chinese side. We figured it was built by a Chinese patrol so we took quick photos and crawled back down.
Meanwhile, since Schneider's map was published already in 1974, I'm not sure why Bonnington chose to call Jobo Garu, Melungtse?
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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May 28, 2014 - 01:45pm PT
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So in your eyes, it's perfectly OK for real climbers to cause death and injury to Sherpa so they can get to the top, but somehow not OK for guided climbers?
Not at all. I said there was a spectrum. By that I mean there are two extremes: the self-sufficient, self-powered, highly skilled climbers. Stephen Venables and crew come close. Charlie Fowler aspired to this ideal. Ueli Steck. Experienced, skilled climbers who treat the mountain and the locals with respect. They have put in many years of practice and experience. On the mountain, they try to take their own risks, as much as they can.
And on the other end of the spectrum there's people to whom getting to the summit is all they care about. They have the financial resources and single-mindedness that, in recent years, they can feel entitled to getting to the summit despite having little or no knowledge of climbing/mountaineering techniques. The summit-baggers look for greater certainty, less risk. The risks involved are slowly transferred to others, guides, sherpas.
I'm very happy that the woman who recently summited made it down OK, despite having arrived at the summit so late in the day. Had any of her summit-attempt-supporting sherpas perished, so soon after the icefall tragedy, it would have been awful and reflected very poorly on her and on climbers in general. She took a huge risk in not turning around hours earlier.
I assume that you must be completely ignorant on the history of Himalayan mountaineering.
True enough. Ya got me there. But I care about style in climbing, whatever the location and altitude. And perhaps not only me. Look at the title of this thread:
"Craziness on Everest Southside Continues"
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