All The Ways Mt. Everest Can Kill You | WIRED

if you took somebody from sea level to the top of Everest no supplemental oxygen no support they would be unconscious within minutes Everest is a very inhospitable environment hundreds of people attempt to Summit Everest every year during a small once a year window that weather allows not everyone makes it and 2023 was an especially fatal year [Music] so there are a number of things that can kill you on Mount Everest you fall into the mountain you fall off the mountain the mountain falls on you but because it's the highest and because people like to check boxes it's popular I think with more inexperienced people that's a problem and Dr Emily Johnston knows she's a mountaineering guide and a doctor trained in Wilderness emergencies particularly at altitude she summited Everest three times in each of the tallest peaks in all seven continents starting at base camp she'll break down the physical dangers that climbers face all the way to the top so this is ever space camp around 17 500 feet the molecules are twice as far apart you've already lost half of your oxygen so 2500 meters that's when you would start to see changes so we're well above that here so acute Mountain sickness is Not Unusual here people do get high altitude pulmonary edema and hilditude cerebral edema here as well people also get GI problems because there are a lot of people living here so it's not unusual for people to get nausea vomiting diarrhea that's probably one of the big biggest problems at base camp is just sanitation and a lot of people fly in and then come up the valley and get GI bugs so GI bugs are a big problem here the kumbo ice fall is constantly moving Frozen River creating deep and wide crevasses it was also the site of a deadly Avalanche that killed 16 in 2014. the kubois fall is a steep area of lots of broken ice lots of crevasses and sorax and the biggest problem here is that ice will fall on you or you will fall on a crevasse it's really difficult because there's no place to land a helicopter because you need a flat space you could pick somebody off with a short haul rescue but it's unlikely that you're going to do that no matter what part of the mountain climbers are on proper gear is essential not just for staying warm but for survival here's some of Emily's essential gear bag so here's some of the standard gear that we use on Everest down suit it's pretty warm here's some big mittens and they're so big that you actually wear another pair of gloves underneath this is that harness that I wear at high altitude you have this thing we call it a crab claw and it's connected to the harness and you have crampons you know spikes that you put on your feet and some gear can save your life or kill you so this is my ice ax pretty standard ice ax for Glacier travel one of the ways we use the ice ax it's not so much it's not a walking stick it's more to stop yourself so what you do is you turn over and you get in Anchor position you try to get this into the snow to slow yourself down or stop yourself it is a tool when it's in control it is a weapon when it's out of control and one of the reasons there's no wrist loop on here is if you fall and it's attached to you with a wrist Loop and you lose control of the ax wow that's not a good situation Camp 3 is a 30 degree snow slope with Rocky exposed Ledges we go up the Western comb to Camp two which is about 21 000 feet 21 500 feet from here we go up the Low T face to Camp 3 which is on the low sea face one of the big problems going from Camp two to Camp three is that's a big jump at a high altitude and so maybe somebody who's had a little bit of acute Mount sickness they've been kind of ignoring it and they're like yeah it's just altitude I don't feel that good Pilots need pulmonary edema high altitude cerebral edema are our greatest concerns and they're not easy to diagnose high altitude pulmonary edema particularly it's a Continuum of brain swelling and this brain swelling is caused by a number of things one thing is when your brain gets hypoxic it opens up the blood flow to the brain and the way it kills you is your brain is a walnut in a shell right the shell is your skull if it swells it can only go so far the only way to for your brain to get out of the shell is to go down through the bottom of your skull which is not compatible with Life that's high altitude cereal edema descent is the treatment of choice what happens sometimes though you get a camp three it's super windy it's in a dangerous spot you can't go down because it's too dangerous so then you have to treat them while they're there we have to use a portable hyperbaric chamber called a Gamo bag it's airtight so it's tough if they're claustrophobic or vomiting or whatever and then you hook the pump up and you pump it up so that the pressure inside the bag simulates being at a lower altitude from a physiologic standpoint and you have to pump it 10 to 20 times a minute so that they get fresh air in there and their carbon dioxide gets expelled you can't just leave somebody in one of these bags because they would suffocate let's give it a try we're going to put you in it perfect that's great so go ahead and lie down so I'm filling the bag with air right now and then I'll overfill it and that is what will simulate altitude if you're going to rescue somebody you can help lower them with the straps that are attached to the outside you can use them tactically ta-da whoa how you doing Camp 4 is the last stop before the summit this is what people call the death zone in the world there are very few human habitations above 16 000 feet because you're you just can't keep up now all of a sudden you're at 26 000 feet you're 10 000 feet above that level and so things are breaking down if you cut yourself you don't heal very well if you get sick you do not get better so you're definitely in the zone where your body can't keep up and on Summit Day from the south call to the summit people are driving themselves really hard they're typically haven't been eating and drinking very well they haven't been sleeping well they're affected by the hypoxia they may be hypothermic and so this is the most dangerous place one just environmentally the atmosphere there's less oxygen and then two they're tired from this whole process between 1921 and 2006 56 percent of deaths occurred during the dissent for people who climbed higher than 8 000 meters getting to the summit is optional getting back down safely is mandatory the problem is there's also this huge sort of catecholamine surge people are like I did it I've achieved my goal you think you've won the game but you haven't you have to get all the way back down all they're thinking about is going home they're not thinking about putting one foot in front of the other they haven't been eating and drinking and they come down and they can fall off and it is a long way and people make big decisions that are wrong like people will come down a ridge and they're supposed to go to the left and they'll go to the right people will make poor decisions they'll sit down and they won't get back up because they're just confused they just have no idea where they are after summoning my biggest concern is exhaustion and dehydration you know snow blindness can set in a little bit later UV keratitis is the fancy name for snow blindness it just means that your corneas are exposed to more ultraviolet radiation than they're accustomed to if you are out in this ultraviolet radiation for too long it can get to the point where the next day it'll feel like you have sand in your eyes and then you won't even be able to open your eyes you need somebody to lead you around and there are a lot of places on the Upper Mountain where you simply can't lead somebody around particularly if you're on above the South call like on a summit bid and you get snow blindness when it if it manifests there it'd be very difficult to rescue somebody who can't see Everest remains one of the safest tall ultra high altitude Peaks to climb simply because of all the infrastructure despite that there was an unusual amount of deaths on the mountain in 2023 the reason we see so many fatalities on Everest is it's a numbers game if you look at the risk of dying on Everest as compared to something like Annapurna it's much lower on Everest it's much lower on Everest than most of the other 8 000 meter Peaks you get more people on the freeway and more people die in car accidents get more people on Mount Everest and more people will die on Mount Everest two is whether typically if you have a whole bunch of people going for the summit on one day if there are fewer Summit days in a season you're probably going to have more problems because you are going to have traffic jams there are people that are box Checkers they just want to have climb Mount Everest and they're so driven to be able to say that at a cocktail party in Houston that they'll just drive themselves to do it so a lot of people just want to check the box but not everybody it's incredibly beautiful up there it's as close as you can get to being on another planet the sky is this impossible blue because there's less atmosphere so the higher you go the Bluer and deeper blue that you get in the sky and when you get to the edge it changes you and there is something that happens that I can't describe but it's very seductive [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 879,351

Keywords: body on mt. everest, climbing, climbing dangers, climbing everest, climbing mount everest, climbing mt. everest, currents, dangers of climbing, dangers of everest, everest, everest base camp, everest expedition, everest summit, extreme mountain climbing, mount everest, mountain climbing, mt everest, mt. everest, mt. everest base camp, mt. everest expedition, mt. everest summit, snow blindness, what happens on mt. everest, wired

Id: QT-VO1uRanM

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2023