Russian roulette at Everest - Horydoly.cz - Outdoor Generation

Can the mayor return from Everest to Prague for forty -eight hours?

It can be done

Promised it.And reality?If he is in the base camp and the weather allows helicopters to fly, he can make it.

The helicopter will pick it up on order, fly to the airport and from there it gets a commercial airline with one to two transfers to the airport in Ruzyně.

If he is fighting on the mountain he will not make it.This also applies to situations where the weather will not be good, the local fighters will shoot, Pavel Bém will not be in good health, available helicopters will have another job...Dozens of other reasons can be devised why such a rapid move to Prague will not succeed.

Info: Mount Everest (8850 m)

As a drum revolver

From the conquerors of the world's highest mountain in Mount Everest, many of them will not return home at all.One of the seven -member expeditions will not survive, says statistics.

They collapse, overwhelmed with an avalanche, die of height disease, freeze or die for a little thing that would not even notice in the safety of home.

The safest at Everest was 1993, when 129 climbers came to the top and eight perished (16: 1 success rate).On the other hand, the worst season met the expeditions in 1996.The ninety -eight people at the top balanced fifteen dead in unfinished attempts (6: 1 success rate).

Purely statistically, this means that from each seven -member expedition one climber must count with a certain death.So it's almost the same as they played Russian roulette.Yet over twelve hundred people, many of them have already stood on top of the country.

First acclimatization

What risks must Pavel Bém and his expedition be prepared for?During the first few hours of stay in Asia, his intestinal microflora begins to change.It is a medical term for harsh diarrhea, vomiting and fever.Even drinking bottled water, food from its own supplies and anxious adherence to personal hygiene will not help against it.This goes through any traveler who visits a distant country with another altitude, other hygiene and other eating.

Already along the way to the base camp, it is often decided whether climbers will reach the top of Everest.They acclimatize at altitude.Their body gets used to lack of oxygen and lower pressure.

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Base camp

The basic camps below Everest do not only create a few tents that are seen in faded images from Hillary and Tenzing's first ascent in 1953.They are small towns with toilets, health centers, pubs, press centers and the Internet.Commonly flying helicopters.Although there is stealing there, but otherwise there is no great danger.Here is resting and climbers here lick the wounds of failed attempts to climb.

The tents are robbery

The tough starts to go above the base camp.It is necessary to gradually build several of your own camps.The first risk is that they find their tent empty.Commonly eating and robbing competing camps.Yet such things must not think much and must focus mainly on the fight against nature.

Avalanches and cracks

Beware of avalanches and cracks in the ice!Who has not experienced the strength of the snow avalanche will hardly feel the horror of the rolling mass.On straight sections of the ascent, climbers move as if they danced on the eggs.In glaciers lurking huge cracks, pits of tens of meters.The bad luck is that on the surface they are blown with a thin layer of snow.Although climbers walk on the rope and confident each other, many of them will take the icy trap of life.

Training: pulling out of the glacier crack needs to be practiced

Swelling of the brain and lungs

The most insidious danger is invisible.The height edema of the lungs and the swelling of the brain result from poor acclimatization.Even doctors do not know exactly why they only interfere with someone.The lungs flood the body fluid and the climber actually drowns.The only chance for survival is to get down immediately.The same is the one with the swelling of the brain.It depends only on friends and climbers from the surrounding expeditions whether the sick get into the base camp.

Medicine: The height disease is an insidious monster

A particularly modified helicopter was able to land on the top of Mount Everest for the first time, but normal machines will barely fly to the basic camp.Higher is too thin air.In addition, most of the time rages on the slopes of the horns of a blizzard, the wind or Everest is veiled in the clouds.These are situations that do not allow pilots to even think about the flight, let alone look for someone and save him.

Video Portable Hyperbar Chamber

The death of cooking

The invisible enemy lurks also while resting in the tent.Climbers must drink a lot during the ascent, and therefore all evenings in the tents cook soups and drinks from the snow.In bad weather often cooks inside, which is very dangerous.The petrol cooker creates a carbon monoxide when burning.Nothing happens for a long time, and when a person feels his effects, he falls into a coma.The carbon monoxide can replace oxygen in the blood.It will kill a person.

Even gas cookers are not completely safe.If the chef does not thoroughly do not consume all oxygen in the tent, the climber will fall asleep and never wake up again.

Death zone

The third danger that is not visible and is even worse is the so -called death zone.From a height of approximately seven thousand meters above sea level, the human body cannot restore its forces.Draws energy only from supplies he created during his life.The same applies to brain cells.Too long stay around eight thousand peaks is therefore harmful in itself, even if everything else was cool.

The article was published in MF DNES

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