A fascinating blog entry at a sea of lead, a sky of slate (via reddit), which answers the question: what happens to all the people who die while attempting to climb Mount Everest? The short answer is that they’re left there, frozen, forever. The conditions up there are absolutely inhospitable to rescue, and those that have tried to bring down the dead have often paid for it with their own lives:
Media term it “summit fever”, the apparent callousness that drives mountaineers to disregard ethics on their Everest ascents, sometimes literally climbing over dead bodies to reach their goals. But whatever the preparation and outlandish cost, perhaps it’s not simply ruthless determination that makes someone abandon their team mates, and yet still have the energy to summit. In such alien conditions, utterly hostile to human life, climbers might face their own mortality. Under the spectre of pure, unadulterated fear, they must realize that they are beyond help as well as beyond helping anyone else.