"13th body found after Everest avalanche; Searchers still looking for 3 Sherpa guides" by Binaj Gurubacharya | Associated Press April 20, 2014
KATMANDU, Nepal — Search teams recovered a 13th body Saturday from the snow and ice covering a dangerous climbing pass on Mount Everest, where an avalanche a day earlier swept over a group of Sherpa guides in the deadliest disaster on the world’s highest peak.
Another three guides remained missing, and searchers were working quickly to find them in case weather conditions deteriorated, said Maddhu Sunan Burlakoti, head of the Nepalese government’s mountaineering department.
But the painstaking effort involved testing the strength of newly fallen snow and using extra ropes, clamps, and aluminum ladders to navigate the treacherous Khumbu icefall, a maze of immense ice chunks and crevasses.
The avalanche slammed into the guides at about 6:30 a.m. Friday near the ‘‘popcorn field,’’ a section of the Khumbu known for its bulging chunks of ice.
Shouldn't those have all melted by now?
The group of about 25 Sherpa guides were among the first people making their way up the mountain this climbing season. They were hauling gear to the higher camps that their foreign clients would use in attempting to reach the summit next month.
One of the survivors told his relatives that the path had been unstable just before the snow slide hit at an elevation near 19,000 feet. The area is considered particularly dangerous due to its steep slope and deep crevasses that cut through the snow and ice covering the pass year round.
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Hundreds of climbers, guides, and support crews had been at Everest’s base camp preparing to climb the 29,035-foot peak next month when weather conditions are most favorable. As in previous years, the Sherpa guides from each of the expedition teams had been working together to prepare the path by carving routes through the ice, fixing ropes on the slopes, and setting up camps at higher altitudes.
One of the injured guides, Dawa Tashi, said the Sherpas were delayed on their way up the slope because the path was unsteady. With little warning, a wall of snow crashed down on the group and buried many of them, according to Tashi’s sister-in-law, Dawa Yanju. Doctors said Tashi, who was partially buried in the avalanche, suffered several broken ribs.
The Sherpa people are one of the main ethnic groups in Nepal’s alpine region, and many make their living as climbing guides on Everest and other Himalayan peaks.
More than 4,000 climbers have summited Everest since 1953, when it was first conquered by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. Hundreds have died trying.
The worst previously recorded disaster on Everest had been a fierce blizzard on May 11, 1996, that caused the deaths of eight climbers, including famed mountaineer Rob Hall, and was later memorialized in a book, ‘‘Into Thin Air,’’ by Jon Krakauer. Six Nepalese guides were killed in an avalanche in 1970.
Earlier this year, Nepal announced several steps to better manage the heavy flow of climbers and speed up rescue operations. The steps included the dispatch of officials and security personnel to the base camp at 17,380 feet, where they will stay throughout the spring climbing season, which ends in May.
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Thought some coffee might warm you up for the search.
"Avalanche kills at least 12 guides in Mount Everest’s worst disaster" by Binaj Gurubacharya | Associated Press April 19, 2014
KATMANDU, Nepal — An avalanche swept down a climbing route on Mount Everest early Friday, killing at least 12 Nepalese guides and leaving four missing in the deadliest disaster on the world’s highest peak. Several more were injured.
The Sherpa guides had gone to fix ropes for other climbers when the avalanche struck an area known as the ‘‘popcorn field’’ for its bulging chunks of ice at about 6:30 a.m., Nepal Tourism Ministry official Krishna Lamsal said from the base camp, where he was monitoring rescue efforts.
An injured survivor told his relatives the path up the mountain was unstable just before the avalanche struck at an elevation just below 21,000 feet. As soon as the avalanche hit, rescuers, guides, and climbers rushed to help.
Rescue workers pulled 12 bodies out from under mounds of snow and ice and were searching for the four missing guides, Lamsal said. Officials had earlier said three were missing.
Four survivors were injured badly enough to require airlifting to a hospital in Katmandu. One arrived during the day, and three taken to the foothill town of Lukla could be evacuated Saturday. Others with less serious injuries were being treated at base camp.
The avalanche struck ahead of the peak climbing season, when hundreds of climbers, guides, and support crews were at Everest’s base camp preparing to climb to the summit when weather conditions are at their most favorable early next month.
I'm thankful for that. Could have been worse.
They had been setting up camps at higher altitudes, and guides were fixing routes and ropes on the slopes above.
The wall of snow and ice hit just below Camp 2, which sits at an elevation of 21,000 feet on the 29,036-foot mountain, said Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
One injured guide, Dawa Tashi, lay in the intensive care unit at Grande Hospital in the capital late Friday after being evacuated from the mountain. Doctors said he suffered several broken ribs and would be in the hospital for a few days.
Tashi told his visiting relatives that the Sherpa guides woke up early and were on their way to fix ropes to the higher camps but were delayed because of the unsteady path.
Suddenly the avalanche fell on the group and buried many of them, according to Tashi’s sister-in-law Dawa Yanju.
It's a horrifying thought.
The worst recorded disaster on Everest had been a fierce blizzard on May 11, 1996, that caused the deaths of eight climbers, including famed mountaineer Rob Hall.
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What you notice is they are not saying the record snowfall is part of it. That would spoil the agenda-pushing narrative of global warming.
"Landslide slowly threatens Wyo. town; Officials suspend work on slope" by Matthew Brown | Associated Press April 20, 2014
JACKSON, Wyo. — A slow-motion calamity continued unfolding in the Wyoming resort town of Jackson on Saturday, as a creeping landslide that split a hillside home threatened to swallow up more houses and businesses.
Related: "The warning comes less than two weeks after at least 30 people were killed by a mudslide in Washington state."
The ground beneath the 100-foot hillside had been slowly giving way for almost two weeks before the downward movement accelerated in recent days.
With rocks and dirt tumbling down, officials suspended efforts to shore up the slope and said they were uncertain what else could be done.
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Authorities said there could be a variety of causes for the slide, including prior construction at the site, warmer weather, and a wet winter that put more water into the ground where it acts as a lubricant for unstable rocks and soil.
Experts say the hillside is unlikely to suddenly collapse like the March 22 landslide in Oso, Wash., that killed 39 people. More likely, large blocks of earth would tumble down piece by piece.
But the threat is real and authorities are enforcing an evacuation order in hopes of avoiding injuries.
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The ground had been moving at a rate of an inch a day but is expected to move increasingly faster as time goes on, said George Machan, a landslide specialist consulting for the town.
Rockslides are common throughout the Rocky Mountains in the spring, as melting snow and warmer weather unleashes the region’s dynamic geology.
They finally mention the melting snow! Rivers are high around here, btw.
In the early 1900s, a massive slide caused by heavy rains north of Jackson formed a natural dam across a small river. The dam gave way two years later, unleashing a flood that killed six people.
But other factors appear to be in play on Jackson’s East Gros Ventre Butte, a small mountain that looms over the west side of town, its base dotted with homes and businesses.
The area of the landslide has been graded for roads and businesses in recent years, including a new Walgreens. That could have weakened the hillside and set the stage for the landslide, although the precise trigger remains under investigation.
One guy said ‘‘I think they are just messing with Mother Nature and they didn’t think of the long-term consequences.’’
That made me think of the endless chem trails I see them laying whenever there is a clear blue sky around here. Were three of them out the other day in the late afternoon just before rush hour. Used to look up there and think whisky clouds, but no more.
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Unlike an earthquake or tornado, landslides typically are isolated and don’t affect large swaths of territory. Yet they consistently rate among the costliest, most frequent, and deadliest natural disasters in the United States, said David Montgomery, a geology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
They occur in all 50 states, kill 25 to 50 people a year and cost $1 billion to $3 billion a year, he said, citing a 2004 National Research Council report.
Landslides in scenic, mountainous areas like Jackson are a lot like the wildfires that occur in the same areas. Both hazards are natural events that present more of a problem when people move in and build subdivisions or shopping areas.
Now I'm getting that agenda-pushing misanthropy feeling.
‘‘When you add it up, it’s actually a major geological hazard,’’ Montgomery said. ‘‘As more people move into more mountainous environments, the opportunities for interactions between human infrastructure and people, and landslides, increase.’’
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"Mudslide victims thinking of future; Rebuilding area unthinkable for some residents" by Kirk Johnson | New York Times April 20, 2014
OSO, Wash. — A sometimes awkward, invariably agonized conversation about the future has begun at the site of last month’s devastating landslide, about what might be rebuilt and what was perhaps forever lost that day.
It is a delicate chemistry, responders and residents say, with the needs of the families grieving or looking for their loved ones — 39 people were killed by the slide, with four others still missing — balanced against the needs of the many other families and businesses struggling with the slide’s aftereffects on the local economy, the transportation system, and the environment.
“We’re doing what a family would do: We’re listening to each other,” said Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, who has repeatedly visited the communities around the slide, helping guide a transition from disaster response to recovery and reconstruction.
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Perhaps most profound for many people is a new awareness of the dangers of life here, amid crumbly and steep glacial slopes, that is changing the psychology. The Cascades are prone to slides, as rivers like the Stillaguamish, fed by the wet Pacific Northwest weather, cut through the hundreds of feet of rubble left on the mountaintops when the glaciers retreated. The landslide on March 22 also came after weeks of near-record rain.
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Small-business owners on both sides of the slide said they worried that state and federal disaster relief efforts, perhaps in sensitivity to the grieving families, might go so slowly that an economic disaster would compound the landslide.
Based on past performance (Katrina, Sandy) that is a given.
With the state highway closed, towns on both edges of the slide — Darrington to the east, Oso and areas of Arlington to the west — have effectively been put on dead-end roads; transit through the corridor during the crucial summer vacation season will not happen this year.
“I think the efforts are caught up in the emotions,” said Carla Hall, 57, the owner of Fruitful Farm, a flower and organic produce market near the slide, where customers, she said, have all but disappeared.
Hall, who pulled Inslee aside at one of the meetings last week to press her concerns, said that the human losses to Oso and Darrington were horrible and that she had known many of the victims. They would not want an area they loved to fall further into ruin, she said. But she also left the meeting, she said, with a better understanding of the recovery plan’s challenges.
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Enough junk food.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"After avalanche deaths, Sherpas rethink risks" | Associated Press April 21, 2014
KATMANDU, Nepal — Many Sherpas, the mountain people whose name has become synonymous with Mount Everest, are reconsidering their jobs as climbing guides after a deadly avalanche that offered a brutal reminder of the immense risks they face.
But because their entire culture has been changed by decades of working as guides and porters for wealthy foreigners, finding a new future will be difficult.
We are all dependent on the whim$ of the wealthy now.
‘‘The mountains are a death trap,’’ said Norbu Tshering, a 50-year-old Sherpa and mountain guide who now lives mostly in Katmandu. ‘‘But we have no other work, and most of our people take up this profession, which has now become a tradition for all of us.’’
Friday’s avalanche was the deadliest disaster ever on Mount Everest. By Saturday evening, the bodies of 13 Sherpa guides had been taken from the mountain. Three more were missing.
A day after the disaster, many Sherpa guides spoke of their work in ways that reflect the complexities of poor people working in a deeply hazardous place. The work is dangerous, but the Sherpas, who were once among the poorest and most isolated people of Nepal, also now have schools, cellphones, and their own middle class.
Which is worth any risk, including spoiled environment, bad water, oil spills, and whatever other items come along with it.
Funny how they are getting a middle class after AmeriKa's has vanished.
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UPDATE: "While the work on Everest is dangerous, it has also become the most sought-after job for many Sherpas. A top high-altitude guide can earn $6,000 in a three-month climbing season, nearly 10 times Nepal’s $700 average annual salary."
