h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What kind? Why a great man of course! A leader of the free world! A paragon of powertripping.

Did you notice how surprised the American media seems to be that "those people" would actually "impede" the "progress"? What's wrong with them?

hummm ... i see you get it!

now, have you heard how this little horror story is beginning to affect the global flows of das kapital. oooohhh, this will be fun.

this guy has no idea what anything costs; i doubt he has ever bought or paid for anything out of money he made by actually working for it. at $75 billion for 30 days or 6 months (depending where you look), he's gonna sink us. and then the running dogs in congress are planning to 'support the troops' by cutting their benefits by several billion if they can and several hundred million if they 'can't!'

camus, sartre, kafka, where are you?

forgive me rusty, but why is it that you feel a need to be curt? why is it that you feel you must not let your guard down? why is it that you feel you must admonish me? why is it that you think 'enjoy the show' is a good statement to toss this way?

Because, in the words of George Mallory, it's there.

Mt. Everest? poor old Mallory, at least he was found...

Yeah, but they didn't find his camera or his buddy so they still don't know for sure if he made it to the top or didn't. Oh well, life's just chuck full of mysteries and loose ends ain't it?

his climbing buddy? well he will probably be found if the global warming continues! ... though, the number of corpses and the refuse is growing each year.

you have better chance of finding your lost innocence than anyone does of finding that camera, i think.

he never made it.

Well, you'll not convince some Brits of that I'm pretty confident. What's funny is knowledgable people are saying he couldn't have made it up the first step let alone the other two and he was probably coming back down when he fell or maybe got pulled off when his buddy fell. The buddy wasn't very experienced but Mallory brought him along to attend to the oxygen gear which he was good at.

Depending on the weather and the snow conditions, that mountain can vary in difficulty. I don't know that anybody knows now how tough it was back in the early 1920s or just how tough those early climbers were compared to the ones now. I suspect they were tougher if less well equipped and Mallory might have made it up the first step because he didn't realize he couldn't do it.

Finding him was an impossibility at one time so who knows what or who they'll find next?

Okay, fine, get me going on a tangent ... harrumph!! I agree that he may have made it to the first step. it also seems better than pure speculation that he was pulled down by his companion who lost control.

I have visited and walked in the Himalayas many times from one end to the other over a good period of time. it's now been decades since I was in their embrace. I lived there, more or less continuously, in the foothills, just above 2K, for four years. the highest pass I've been in is at close to 5K up and the mountains tower up another K at either side. the snow never melts and nothing substantial grows there but it is breathtaking in more ways then one. I've been there when a portion of the face of the mountain has suddenly moved downhill.

so, were they tougher then? maybe. the conditions they faced were certainly tougher to deal with. did this make them tougher, perhaps. but, I think there are many hardy types today; especial for me are the damn fools who insist on getting there and back without supplemental O2.

Actually I'm not talking about freaks like Viesters who can process oxygen at 89 percent efficiency or better because they got the right genes. I'm talking about people who get up everyday in real life and turn up the thermostat instead of shoveling coal in the stove so the ice will melt on the inside of the house.

The coal shovelers were the sort of people who were climbing when Mallory was a kid on his way up in the world and they were tougher by an order of magnitude because they didn't have all the luxuries the current guys have had. Not because they couldn't afford them but because those luxuries simply didn't exist.

It's the same with the indian oldtimers. Tough!! That's why I'm alive really, because those people were probably a good deal tougher than I'll ever be.

Now, the current crop of climbers have better insulation in their clothing and boots and lighter equipment even if they have to cut their toothbrushes in half. They know all about acclimation and aerobic conditioning and congestive heart failure and why the deadzone's dead. They can even shoot Imax movies from on top, but they still freeze to death, fall, disappear or whatever, so that leads me to believe they ain't quite as tough as they think a lot of times and their assessments of Mallory or other oldtimers might not be quite as accurate as they think either.

And you might have noticed that no one's traversed the West Ridge since 1963. I wonder why that is?

Joe Tasker and a group tried it back in the 1980s and gave up before they even got on the ridge itself. Tasker's dead now along with Peter Boardman. They found one or the other but one's still missing. Like I said, I wonder who they'll find next.

Do you know anything about K-2, Kyaa, or were you just living in the India part?

what did you want to know about Godwin-Austin?

i've been in pakistan; almost got killed in a twin engine turboprop above pakistan when it was caught and tossed about like a feather in a monsoonmade especially freocious by the wall of the himalayas.

From the pictures it looks like a real mean mountain, meaner than Chomolungma even. Your close call with the monsoon probably says something about that doesn't it?

the mountains are not mean, merely magnificent. it is people who anthromorphize....

You don't think the mountains have spirits and should be respected, maybe even feared a little?

...respect for the mountins, without a doubt. do they have life in the sense of a human having and acting out life, i don't think so.

but, you'll remember - and i hope i don't lose you (at worst) or give you a headache - i don't think anything is permanent or as it seems to appear...

Well, I do think they have life, so I guess we disagree then.

hey you, where did i say they don't live, eh?

"do they have life in the sense of a human having and acting out life, i don't think so."

What does that mean then? Is human life different than other life?

how it is experienced and understood thereafter shared, yes, certainly.

Maybe, but I'm not so sure about that.