Everest - The Challenge

Steve said:

Very interesting programme - in my opinion, although he didn't succeed
in reaching the summit, I wouldn't count it as a failure. He *did*
manage to go from hardly any experience to winter skills in Scotland,
7000m Aconcagua in South America, EBC and ABC, albeit with specialist
help, in what looked like a matter of weeks.

I'd be extremely happy with that.

Change weeks for months. Physically he was able but I got the
impression that when push came to shove he just didn't want to go
anywhere near the death zone.

Have a go yourself if you have five grand to spare.
http://www.jagged-globe.co.uk/exp/itinerary/north+col.html
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

Phil Cook said:

Steve said:

Very interesting programme - in my opinion, although he didn't succeed
in reaching the summit, I wouldn't count it as a failure. He *did*
manage to go from hardly any experience to winter skills in Scotland,
7000m Aconcagua in South America, EBC and ABC, albeit with specialist
help, in what looked like a matter of weeks.

I'd be extremely happy with that.

Change weeks for months. Physically he was able but I got the
impression that when push came to shove he just didn't want to go
anywhere near the death zone.

His companions urged him to go on and I think they must have been
extremely irritated by his refusal to do so. What he considered
reasons for him to go back down seemed little more than lame excuses.
The others had the same symptoms as he had, he had been checked by the
team doctor, but he claimed to know better.

Quoted message said:

Have a go yourself if you have five grand to spare.
http://www.jagged-globe.co.uk/exp/itinerary/north+col.html

You'll also need an adequate CV, or they won't take you.

John D.
--
at home in Kendal, Cumbria
Lake District Walks at: http://www.lakedistrictwalks.com/
Kilimanjaro trip at: http://www.lakedistrictwalks.com/kilimanjaro/

John Dawson said:

Quoted message said:

Change weeks for months. Physically he was able but I got the
impression that when push came to shove he just didn't want to go
anywhere near the death zone.

I don't blame him either.

Quoted message said:

His companions urged him to go on and I think they must have been
extremely irritated by his refusal to do so. What he considered
reasons for him to go back down seemed little more than lame excuses.

I think they were unfairly critical of him. The essence of the
programme was to put an ordinary person into an extraordinary situation
and I think he did extremely well under the circumstances.

Quoted message said:

The others had the same symptoms as he had, he had been checked by the
team doctor,

True, but there's a big difference, they were dedicated peak baggers,
whereas he was just a mountain biker. I think at that level, the
difference all comes down to motivation. Anyone who really wants to
climb Everest will have the motivation to put up with the suffering, but
getting to the top of the world clearly isn't that important to a
mountain biker, and I think it's unreasonable to expect someone to go
through that suffering when his heart wasn't really in it.

I also don't think it's sensible to attempt it if you don't think you
can do it. Belief is an important factor in helping you to succeed. If
you don't believe you can do it, you probably won't.

Quoted message said:

but he claimed to know better.

Well if you recall, his first experience of high altitude wasn't good
and he had to be taken down by helicopter. That was undoubtedly in the
back of his mind. He may well have been afraid of that happening again,
in a situation where no-one would be able to help him.

That pep talk by wossname didn't help either, telling him that some
people just die up there and there's nothing anyone can do to help you.

I'd have turned back, but then I'm a wimp anyway.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Paul Saunders said:

Well if you recall, his first experience of high altitude wasn't good
and he had to be taken down by helicopter. That was undoubtedly in the
back of his mind. He may well have been afraid of that happening again,
in a situation where no-one would be able to help him.

As I recall it was another member of the party who was airlifted from
Aconcagua.

John D.

"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

Rob Naylor wrote:

He looked like he was having physical problems to me, i.e. too knackered
to continue. That may be the "ordinary" person's definition of
knackered, but if I felt like he looked, I certainly wouldn't have
wanted to go on, but again, I don't have the motivation to climb
Everest.

I think that's the issue. He didn't have the motivation to climb a mountain.
He was interested in the physical challenge and didn't mind hard work, but
I'm not sure when he got onto the hill that he was particularly bothered
about climbing it. I guess most people think walking up Scafell is futile.

There were of course, psychological issues he discussed with a sports
therapist (I think) but we weren't allowed to hear what they discussed.

Roy.

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"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

John Dawson wrote:
<snip>

Quoted message said:

I think they were unfairly critical of him. The essence of the
programme was to put an ordinary person into an extraordinary situation
and I think he did extremely well under the circumstances.

But he wasn't an "ordinary person"...he was a fit, ex Royal Marine, mountain
bike instructor. Not been that high myself, but people I know who have
reckon that when you're *really* too shagged to continue, you can't even
speak. This guy was talking quite lucidly to camera, so I don't think his
problems were physical.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The others had the same symptoms as he had, he had been checked by the
team doctor,

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Well if you recall, his first experience of high altitude wasn't good
and he had to be taken down by helicopter. That was undoubtedly in the
back of his mind. He may well have been afraid of that happening again,
in a situation where no-one would be able to help him.

er, don't think so...he was quite elated on Aconcagua about how he'd coped
with the altiude...he was bopping around energetically when others in the
party were gasping and wheezing along. It was someone else who got HAPE and
had to have a chopper ride down.

Quoted message said:

That pep talk by wossname didn't help either, telling him that some
people just die up there and there's nothing anyone can do to help you.

True..Hinkes didn't exactly help the guy's mental state!

Sloppy production by the film-mkers, too, captioning Sir Chris as
"Bonnington" and Chapatti Al as "Hinks"!

Rob

John Dawson said:

As I recall it was another member of the party who was airlifted from
Aconcagua.

Sorry, my mistake.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Rob Naylor said:

Quoted message said:

I think they were unfairly critical of him. The essence of the
programme was to put an ordinary person into an extraordinary
situation and I think he did extremely well under the circumstances.

But he wasn't an "ordinary person"...he was a fit, ex Royal Marine,
mountain bike instructor.

Which sorta makes a mockery of the principle behind the programme,
doesn't it? I didn't know he was an ex Royal Marine, I missed the start
of the programme.

Quoted message said:

Not been that high myself, but people I
know who have reckon that when you're *really* too shagged to
continue, you can't even speak.

I suppose so, if you're dedicated enough to push yourself hard enough to
get into that state.

Quoted message said:

This guy was talking quite lucidly
to camera, so I don't think his problems were physical.

He looked like he was having physical problems to me, i.e. too knackered
to continue. That may be the "ordinary" person's definition of
knackered, but if I felt like he looked, I certainly wouldn't have
wanted to go on, but again, I don't have the motivation to climb
Everest.

Quoted message said:

er, don't think so...he was quite elated on Aconcagua about how he'd
coped with the altiude...he was bopping around energetically when
others in the party were gasping and wheezing along. It was someone
else who got HAPE and had to have a chopper ride down.

As I say, I missed the start of the programme so I must have been
confused about who was who at that point.

Quoted message said:

True..Hinkes didn't exactly help the guy's mental state!

And that was a big factor I reckon. Fear of imminent death combined
with lack of motivation is not a good recipe for success.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

Roy said:

There were of course, psychological issues he discussed with a sports
therapist (I think) but we weren't allowed to hear what they
discussed.

He mentioned NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) before they cut it. I
would have liked to hear that too, but it would have consumed too much
programme time. Basically he gave him a psychological pep talk using
NLP techniques. Fascinating stuff, you can buy books on it. Try
googling.

Aagh. No wonder he came back to Basecamp. I got to page 3 of Google and
almost lost the will to live.

Now on the basis of this snippet from businessballs.com:

1. Know what outcome you want to achieve.
2. Have sufficient sensory acuity (acuity means clear understanding) to know
if you are moving towards or away from your outcome
3. Have sufficient flexibility of behaviour so that you can vary your
behaviour until you get your outcome.
4. Take action now.

it would appear to depend very much on knowing what you want to achieve.

Pretty obvious really but, is your goal to
a) Climb Everest
b) Challenge myself
c) Come back alive.

If C predominates, then NLP will presumably send you scurrying to the valley
as quickly as possible.

It's because there are so many people in the A category that Everest is
littered with corpses.

I had a go at the athletes "visualisation" technique for rock climbing. My
problem was that I would climb smoothly and effortlessly to the crux, then
fall off. What's more ALL my gear would pull and I'd hit the deck.

Ah me.

Roy.

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Roy said:

There were of course, psychological issues he discussed with a sports
therapist (I think) but we weren't allowed to hear what they
discussed.

He mentioned NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) before they cut it. I
would have liked to hear that too, but it would have consumed too much
programme time. Basically he gave him a psychological pep talk using
NLP techniques. Fascinating stuff, you can buy books on it. Try
googling.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

John Dawson said:

Paul Saunders said:

Well if you recall, his first experience of high altitude wasn't good
and he had to be taken down by helicopter. That was undoubtedly in the
back of his mind. He may well have been afraid of that happening again,
in a situation where no-one would be able to help him.

As I recall it was another member of the party who was airlifted from
Aconcagua.

Yes, it was his trekking companion who was airlifted from Aconcagua
base camp. Not very high in the grand scheme of things. Yer man never
made the summit of Aconcagua either having only three days to get it
in and the weather was penc. Though he was checked by the doc and
found to be acclimatising well, which is why they let him go on to
Everest.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

Roy said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

There were of course, psychological issues he discussed with a
sports therapist

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

He mentioned NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)

Aagh. No wonder he came back to Basecamp. I got to page 3 of Google
and almost lost the will to live.

LOL!

Quoted message said:

Now on the basis of this snippet from businessballs.com:

Now isn't that strange? I looked through the first three pages too and
clicked on exactly the same link!

Quoted message said:

it would appear to depend very much on knowing what you want to
achieve.

Yep.

Quoted message said:

Pretty obvious really but, is your goal to
a) Climb Everest
b) Challenge myself
c) Come back alive.

If C predominates, then NLP will presumably send you scurrying to the
valley as quickly as possible.

Indeed.

Quoted message said:

It's because there are so many people in the A category that Everest
is littered with corpses.

Extremely motivated corpses.

Let's look at the seven aspects of "nlp principle 1 - achieving
outcomes"

1. "The first of these is that the outcome needs to be stated in
positive terms. This means that the outcome must be what you want and
not what you don't want to happen."

So Hinkes' pep talk about people dying up there in the death zone wasn't
really a very good application of nlp techniques, filling Tony's head
with ideas about what he didn't want to happen.

2. "The second well-formedness condition for outcomes is that the
outcome must be testable and demonstrable in sensory experience." In
another book I read it was explained that if you've done something once,
you'll be confident that you can do it again.

In this case Tony had no previous experience of climbing Everest, so was
not convinced that it was possible. Obviously climbing Everest first to
prove that he could do it was out of the question, but this condition
could have been satisfied by climbing another major mountain peak first.
However, they failed to conquer Aconcagua. If they'd succeeded, he'd
have had actual experience of reaching the summit of a major peak, which
could have made a big difference to his expectations.

3. "Third, the desired state must be sensory specific. You must be able
to say what you would look like, sound like and feel like if you
achieved the outcome."

Clearly he didn't expect climbing Everest to feel like he had a massive
hangover and the flu at the same time. I wouldn't have visualised
standing on the top of the world in that way. I didn't realise that
everyone was affected like that.

4. "Fourth, the outcome or desired state must be initiated and
maintained by the subject. This places the locus (ie position) of
control and responsibility for achieving the outcome with the subject
and not with someone else."

This condition wasn't satisfied either. He didn't initiate the project,
he wasn't in control and he wasn't responsible. He was effectively
being forced to do it.

5. "Fifth, the outcome must be appropriately and explicitly
contextualised."

This one doesn't seem particularly relevant. It seems to mean that he
should want to climb Everest in the context of taking part in a
television challenge to climb Everest.

6. "Sixth, the desired outcome must preserve any positive product of
the present state. If this is not the case then symptom substitution may
occur."

Presumably he felt good in his "present" state, prior to attempting the
climb. Climbing Everest made him feel less good, so he didn't associate
any positive benefits with getting to the top. He could only see
negative possibilites. Symptom substitution? Giving himself more
reasons to give up?

7. "Seventh and finally, the outcome or desired state must be
ecologically sound. You should consider the consequences for yourself
and for other people and not pursue outcomes that lead to harm to
yourself or other people."

Well that rather clinches it, doesn't it?

I'm not sure what the psychologist said to him, but it seems to me that
NLP is about achieving what *you personally* want to achieve, not what
someone else wants you to achieve for the sake of a bit of reality TV.

He may have wanted to take part in a TV challenge, but he didn't
*really* want to get to the top of Everest. He probably didn't expect
anything like that when he applied for it.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Steve said:

Very interesting programme -

What intrested me was seeing the pull up to the North Col
It didnt look anywhere near as hard as I expected.
(_I am puting aside all thought of the altitude here_)
This is where a whole rope of sherpas was lost in '22
and it proved trouble to a number of expeditions (memory of Unsworth
to feint for details)

After what he had to do in the Alps, I was expecting the "climbing" to
be harder than I had expected of Everest, but that was as hard as it
got. I wouldnt be happy doing what he did in the Alps, but what he did
on Everest I would be happy to do.

The North Col camp looked something else, looked like it was right
under a serac or bergschund

Rob Naylor said:

Not been that high myself, but people I know who have
reckon that when you're *really* too shagged to continue, you can't even
speak.

If someone as tired as that tried to continue up Ben Nevis and got
into difficulties, the mountain rescue would report them to the press,
he/she'd be labelled a moron and we'd be talking about him/her on here
for weeks.

Quoted message said:

This guy was talking quite lucidly to camera, so I don't think his
problems were physical.

Um... I don't follow that.

Best wishes,
--
Peewiglet

"Steve" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Very interesting programme - in my opinion, although he didn't

succeed

Quoted message said:

in reaching the summit, I wouldn't count it as a failure. He *did*
manage to go from hardly any experience to winter skills in

Scotland,

Quoted message said:

7000m Aconcagua in South America, EBC and ABC, albeit with

specialist

Quoted message said:

help, in what looked like a matter of weeks.

I'd be extremely happy with that.

Lets face it, climbing Everest without oxygen is as tough as it gets,
but I thought he could have given it a better shot. In the
circumstances it was a brave thing to do though - I think I'd have
probably crawled all the way to the top knowing I was going to be on
prime time TV!

Graham

spongebob said:

Lets face it, climbing Everest without oxygen is as tough as it gets,
but I thought he could have given it a better shot. In the
circumstances it was a brave thing to do though - I think I'd have
probably crawled all the way to the top knowing I was going to be on
prime time TV!

But I suspect that you probably have a bit more motivation in the
peak-bagging area than he did.

I'm convinced it was a motivation/belief thing.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

I wonder how long it'll take for this thread to drift to GPS's or Photography?
8^}

Regards: Jim Ford

Jim Ford said:

I wonder how long it'll take for this thread to drift to GPS's or
Photography? 8^}

Don't think negatively! Focus on your desired outcome!

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Quoted message said:

His companions urged him to go on and I think they must have been
extremely irritated by his refusal to do so. What he considered
reasons for him to go back down seemed little more than lame excuses.
The others had the same symptoms as he had, he had been checked by the
team doctor, but he claimed to know better.

I watched the programme 2 days after reading about Everest 1996, in
particular the case of Bruce Herrod. With that in mind, I say stuff
their 'irritation' and so-called 'lame excuses'. He is still alive, and
acheived what most people don't get to do, summit or not.

Regardless of other people in the party, the 'drive' to continue comes
from the individual themselves. If a person is mentally uncomfortable
with something, they're not going to think and function properly which
that could result in disaster!

If I had done what he did, I would consider that a great personal
achievement - not a failure - and frankly wouldn't care what they
thought. I remember Pete Athans quote 'This is a round trip'
Tony successfully completed a round trip. Bruce Herrod (and others)
reached the summit and are dead.

Having said all of that, we were watching a heavily edited programme, so
I would like to have heard the full interviews.

Steve