June 14, 2004

• Nucking futs. Nutting fucks. Futting nucks. Nukting fucts. Nip nip! Eep! Ook!
• can someone please explain the whole mountain-climbing thing to me? i mean, there's a mountain, let's go climb it! why? you get to the top, you look around, you go back down. i'm just not the outdoorsy type, i guess.
• SideDish, because it's there.
• Because there's nothing like getting to the top, looking back down and thinking, "yeah, I did that, I beat my own fear, my own sloth and gravity to get up here." That being said, I'll stick to rocks, trad and big wall climbing. Any form of climbing where I have to fight the elements and can lose stuff to frostbite is too extreme for me. Also, climber chicks are hot. =)
• Quote:"The bodies of many of those who died are still on the mountain and one climber who died from an accidental fall is still hanging from a rope," Pemba said. What I want to know is, does he mean that the body of the dead climber is still hanging from a rope, or is his spirit imprisoned on the mountain, reenacting the last moments of his earthly life, manifesting as a man hanging from a rope? And what's in the tea Pemba's drinking? I want some. (probably Yak butter)
• Yak butter!
• Mmmmm...unexplained yak butter.
• Mmmmm mmmm.. tsampa! I loves me some tsampa when I'm reading Lobsang Rampa. Pass the yak butter. Watch out for that dead mountaineer over there, he's goin for the nas rtsam.
• Ah, PF's in fine form today. (ook ook) Why not have funeral rites as a gesture of respect toward the dead, toward the customs of the people, and toward the mountain? I don't believe in ghosts, but if there IS bad juju, this place has to have some. The image of the dead climber dangling from a rope is enough to give me the heebee jeebees.
• "I don't believe in ghosts.." You will. Oh, you will.
• Nostril, some of the bodies are indeed still on the mountain. Having been frozen into random places, or fallen into unreachable crevasses and the like.
• .. hang on, how can you believe in bad juju ('vibes' I guess you mean), and not in ghosts? They're both pretty much based on the same supernaturalist theory of the universe.
• Grokked, surlyboi. I understand the whole body thing & difficulty of getting them. I was for a moment wondering, this guy being a Nepalese & all, in what manner he was referring to the guy on the rope. For those dudes, the spirit world is as real as the physical, but no doubt he meant there's a dry frozen corpse hanging from a rope up there. Pretty wild, eh?
• It might have been the ghosts that provided the impetus for his record. I have this vision of him doing a "Feet, don't fail me now" and rocketing up and over the tip of the mountain like it was a ski jump, followed by a diminishing yowl all the way down the reverse slope.
• can someone please explain the whole mountain-climbing thing to me? i mean, there's a mountain, let's go climb it! why? you get to the top, you look around, you go back down. Wow, Sidedish! Second time this day you try to shake the fundations of my beliefs. Have you ever been on a beach cliff? rented a room with an excellent outside vista to an entire city? Have you seen the photos I put on my blog (No, I won't shamelessly link it here). It just feels good to do it and be there and watch everything from the top (at least for me). Whatever the deep psycological reasons there may be. And please. Don't make me start asking you why you are compelled to participate in an extremelly pointless (IMHO) naked ridding event.
• Ghosts, pshaw! But it never pays to be too cocksure about bad juju.
• Besides, as surlyboi points out, climber chicks are hot.
• The way I understand it, ghosts would be a welcome distraction from the grotesque charnel house which Everest has become, where climbers have to shove aside the rubbish and undecayed frozen corpses simply in order to follow the now well-trodden route.
• Plegmund: Exhausted, snow-blind, and poorly clad porters have been abandoned in snowstorms by Europeans anxious to get home fast. I've read some past articles about how Sherpas have been treated by previous expeditions, and how they are still being abused. Climbers with thousands of dollars of hi-tech gear can even be bothered to see if their guides have decent footwear. Stupid on their part, as the Sherpa may save their arrogant arses. I would imagine the conditions on the top could bring out the best and the worst in a human being. That more climbers haven't been abandoned says volumes. Not surprising that there are claims being made that Pemba Dorji Sherpa didn't actually climb the mountain. What a blow to the hot-shots. /snark
• Sadly, none of these big climbs are being done by the true climbers anymore. People like me (and if I may be so bold as to include him, Zemat.) who do it for the reasons that have been mentioned in previous posts. The people that do Everest and K2 and even Eiger now, do it because it's one more way to make themeselves feel better about the fact that they've made shitloads of money and their lives are still pretty much empty. At least, that's my take on it. YMMV.
• I'm not so much of a true climber really. Just a guy that likes heights. The hills I have climbed are short and easy.
• I'm in Z's camp. It's cool to look down on the land below you. I also like holding onto rock. I don't particularly get off on climber gear. Make mine nontechnical. You can still have fun scrambling in personal 4x4 mode.

• Alternative view: he's fucking nuts.

  How's that noticeably more nuts than people who believe a biscut turns into the mortal flesh of their God's son (who is in some inexplicible way the same entity) every Sunday?
• It's not noticeably more nuts than people who believe a biscuit turns into the mortal flesh of their God's son (who is in some inexplicible way the same entity) every Sunday*. After all, the Sherpa guy actually experienced something up there to form the basis of his conclusions. I like to say something at the end of my posts about supernature, like "probably not" or "he's fucking nuts" so I can head the reactionary skeptics off at the pass whilst still slipping the alternative viewpoint under the radar & into the old frontal lobes. Ya get me? /eyebrow wiggle *Depends on the flavour of the biscuit
• Is this biscuit low carb? Because Saint Atkins said I couldn't have one if it wasn't. Oh wait, different religion.
• Wow rodgerd. What happened there? Had an epiphany?
• Zemat: No, just curious. I've always found it an interesting when people (appear) to offer incredulity to things that are no (fundamentally) ludicrous that socially acceptable beliefs. Like, say, Protestant young Earth creationists making fun of Mormon underwear or UFOlogists.
• The thing you'll have to accept about me, rodgerd et al, is that I don't actually believe anything. But & can also make an acid-head like hop into another ego state & take on some really far-out belief-system totally, if only for a few moments. The irony is, that when I claim this, no one believes me. I exist in a kind of n-state of belief. My universe is a goblin universe. This will be the fundamental theme of all my posts, essentially. On the issue of Pemba Dorji Sherpa, I am not gonna argue with a guy who climbed the highest mountain in the friggin world in 8 & a bit hours if he says he saw a bunch of ghosts up there. It doesn't make him an expert on ghosts, but it makes him somewhat more believable than an armchair skeptic who says 'harumph', and much more believable than the doctrine of the transubstantiation of the host.
• Keeping Everest Honest Whether you’re Reinhold Messner, who completed his solo climb in 1980, or part of a modern expedition packing sushi, anyone who makes it to the top of Mount Everest faces one more challenge: a question-­ and-answer session with Elizabeth Hawley, at the age of eighty-two still the authoritative chronicler of climbing in the Himalayas. *Hiccups #2932 in #2932* *still misses Chyren*