Wednesday 11 March 2015

Dying On Everest


Old Knudsen fights for many environmental rights such as the cutting off of shark fins to make soup out of .... who the fuck eats soup besides weemen and hipsters? Eat the rest of the fucking fish too. And trees, during a storm they can be deadly so lets get rid of those, Jap snipers also love to hide in them. The environment is vitally important to Old Knudsen, good shaps, good pavements and some hanging baskets make a great environment.  

In my youth I went through a 'because it's there' phase. Why did you kill that fella, "because he was there"why did you grab her boobie .... you get the idea and so armed with the stupidity of youth I climbed Mount Everest.

That was before oxygen tanks, we carried up paper bags full of air so we could breath at those high-altitudes. It was tough going, the sherpas that were carrying me died halfway up and so I had to put some effort into the climb. 
I must admit that I'm embarrassed to say that I died up there, frozen in place as I sat doon to eat a tub of ice-cream, it was yummy strawberry sorbet. You know what it's like, yer surrounded by snow and suddenly you get a craving for some cocaine or ice-cream, luckily I always carry both. 

My fellow climbers only noticed that I wasn't there when they reached the top and wanted to put up the Union fleg which was securely in my pack, since it was before everyone had camera phones I was also the artist and so they couldn't take a picture of the event either which annoyed them. I can only draw stick people anyways.

On the way back they saw me sitting there frozen to death. I had a weird out of body experience in which I could see them kicking me and then rolling me off the mountain. I was flying with the eagles, anything was possible now I was free of my meat suit prison, I was about to check out some lassies in an all female volley ball team locker room when I felt I was being pulled doon to earth. 

The friction of the roll and the warmth of the lower altitude had defrosted me and I was alive again ... I had really wanted to go to that locker room. 

   

George and Ruth Mallory.

Another climber who died on Everest years after Old Knudsen did was George Mallory. Mallory served in WWI and was one of the ones doing the shelling during the battle of the Somme, afterwards became a bit of a travel writer, climbing around Europe and India and at the age 37 he thought he'd be getting too old to climb Everest so he had better get on with it .... because it's there.  

He joined a 1924 expedition and set off from the base camp with Andrew Irvine. It is not known if they made it to the top and both Mallory and Irvine went missing for 75 years. Irvine's axe was found just sitting on a rock in 1933 and in 1936 and 1975 climbers reported to have seen Mallory's body. 

He had a broken leg and a hole in his head probably from his ice pick. 

In 1999 Conrad Anker found Mallory below where the axe had been found in 1933. On his body was a brass altimeter, stag-handled pocket knife, a monogrammed handkerchief, a metal tin of stock cubes: Brand & Co. Savoury Meat Lozenges, a piece of paper with numbers on it probably the pressures for his oxygen bottles and a pair of snow goggles.

They had hoped to find his camera but maybe sometime in the future we will. Did he reach the top or die on his way down? Until we get the camera we may never know. However they did not find a picture of his wife Ruth on his person, he had promised to leave it at the top if he reached it and no picture has been found at the summit. His body was then covered with stones and a short service was held. 

An Indian climber nicknamed Green boots. 

It takes a lot of effort to move at such heights with little oxygen and so carrying down another person would be very dangerous. Climbers have walked past many a person in the act of dying and those people are still up there. At the moment climbers are being asked to carry back any waste or trash they bring with them or any they find, that's almost a hundred years of frozen poo. 

You'd think that climbers would be environmentally friendly but it seems that they are just a bunch of cunts looking for a cool Facebook update. Eventually maybe the bodies will be brought down too. Bodies like green boots there is used as a marker for climbers. 
Attempts to find Mallory again to figure out if he made it or not have failed but others (including Sir Edmund Hillary and George's son John) have said that it doesn't matter if he reached the top or not as getting down safely is part of a successful climb. 

   

  

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