The excellent Mark Horrell looks at recent scientific research on success and death rates on the world’s highest mountain »
Once a year (except this year, obviously), there is an Everest feeding frenzy as traditional and social media sink their teeth into the latest Everest season, producing an avalanche of opinion about how overcrowded and easy Everest is to climb these days.
Barring a few lone voices, such as the excellent Alan Arnette whose annual Everest coverage has become the unrivalled source of contemporary Everest history and commentary, rarely does anyone delve into the data to try to connect opinion with reality.
Which is why I was very excited to see a paper entitled Mountaineers on Mount Everest: Effects of age, sex, experience, and crowding on rates of success and death published on the open-access scientific journal PLOS ONE last week. …
Here are some of the things we now understand better »
- Summit success is becoming more likely
- Women are more likely to summit and less likely to die
- Success rates plummet after age 40
- Previous experience at high altitude counts
- Experience matters less now than it used to
- Everest is becoming safer
- …
Climb higher into the Mark Horrel’s post.