Inside Nepal's Fake Rescue Racket(kathmandupost.com) |
Inside Nepal's Fake Rescue Racket(kathmandupost.com) |
And Sagarmartha national park and the whole valley up to EBC is an amazingly beautiful part of the world.
For other mountains with dry summits in the summers, I would agree: the effects of erosion are frightening
The saying is that the snowpack gives back everything you put in it.
This doesnt sound accurate. I have trekked the Himalayas for over a decade - the risks of AMS are very real. Two people I have trekked with have died due to AMS on separate himalayan treks - both had trekked multiple times before, and were well aware of the risks. Both the fatalities were around 12000-14000 feet - much below the Everest Base Camp trek. When AMS hits, you need to descend - as fast as possible, with whatever means you have at your disposal. Otherwise you have unknowingly entered a Russian Roulette.
And Diamox is used as a preventative course for AMS - alongside excessive water intake - this is standard guidelines in all high altitude himalayan treks.
In aviation rules you can have passengers at 12k ft without oxygen for an unlimited amount of time. The crew needs to use oxygen if you're between 10k and 13k for more than 30 minutes. Above 13k both crew and passengers must use oxygen immediately (EASA rules, FAA is different).
So they seem to consider 12k to not be dangerous to passengers.
But the temperature does make it worse. Your body is trying to generate heat, which increases oxygen demand. Your blood vessels are constricting, so circulation is less efficient, limiting oxygen distribution. All together, this creates all sorts of health risks.
Sitting in a comfy plane seat browsing the internet is not the same thing. Besides, even healthy adults just sitting can experience mild hypoxia effects above about 10k ft - fatigue, mild cognitive effects, headaches. But if you're just sitting, it's generally tolerable. Of course, you don't want pilots working in those conditions for any length of time.
The problems come if you haven't acclimatized.
> In at least one case cited in the investigation, baking powder was mixed into food to make tourists physically unwell.
A small amount won't make a different, it'll just stimulate a bit more H+ production from your stomach's proton pumps.
Edit: The article I read claims the scam involved baking powder, which makes even less sense given that it's even more noticeable, bitter and metallic.
It's "not that high", but people frequently do get AMS at those attitudes or even lower.
The highest peak in the contiguous United States is Mt. Whitney at ~14.5k feet
I got Acute Mountain Sickness at just 11k feet. Headache, nausea, dizziness, fatigue. I passed out until hitting the ground woke me up. I was very disoriented and vulnerable. If someone had told me that I had to get to a hospital or I'd die they could have led me like a tame goat. And they could be right. If you have high-altitude cerebral or pulmonary edema it is life threatening.
A guide getting a kickback can make it a lot more likely just by cutting short the boring acclimatization time.
So while it might feel like the insurers were getting fleeced, it was almost certainly the insured who didn't get the copter ride.
Pics/video: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBTpLGtydZW/
Why would it be fixed? Insurance companies aren’t willing to invest in oversight, and everyone else profit, there is no incentive for changing the system.
It's basically a way for everyone to get more tourists dollars, which is one of Nepals primary exports.
However, if they all gang up together they might do something - but that can cause other issues (a local insurer becomes the only insurance available, etc).
What is less discussed is what happened to people who were able to identify the scam and refused to let it happen.
The new parliament is a radical departure in many ways. Its very hollywoodish if you happen to read the development.
It percolated up. It’s usually what happens with corruption. If lower levels are found out to have a lucrative scheme, the higher ups (auditors, police, legislators) make a big fuss about stumping it publicly, but behind the scenes go and ask for a cut.
On the whole, there is finite capacity of certain assets, like helicopters. If the emergency carrying capacity is X and true emergencies are .6 X then there is spoiled capacity of .4 X, in which fraudulent emergencies are placed, keeping everyone in the system whole so that when true emergencies approach .9 X there is no need for fraud. This follows the "optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" and eliminating this fraud might remove the margin needed for the system to exist at all.
An anecdote tells of the British government's bounty on dead Indian cobras
giving locals the perverse incentive to start breeding the snakes, to be able
to kill more of them and collect more bounty
Start of AMS like symptoms can easily be mistaken for walking fatigue and dehydration. It is easier to identify if you are at rest, but during the trek that is seldom the case. So when you actually start realizing something is wrong, you already are at an elevated risk. The only thing that works in these cases is to descend and as fast as possible at that.
Considering the fact that AMS will absolutely and a 100% kill you if you play around with it, guides presenting trekkers with an option of helicopter rescue is not that bad, at least if you look at the worst that can happen.
The amount of each incident is fairly low, and probably goes a long way to funding the local community.
But the number of incidents is nuts - well over 1000 per year.
I have no idea how many of those people have to buy insurance.
Source: https://everestcamptrek.com/how-many-people-hike-to-everest-...
The only ill effect I can find from overconsumption is a "tingly sensation on the tongue". Of course, that doesn't mean the 'poisoner' wasn't ignorant of this, and genuinely did it trying to make them sick. Or maybe they simply said, "If you feel your tongue tingling, YOU ARE DYING!!!".
The creator certainly got pretty crook from ingesting baking soda
Make coverage void in the Himalayas... problem solved
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. People regularly experience AMS at the heights far below what OP mentioned, whether on the day they arrive or on days 2-4, and that's not even accounting for strenuous physical activity.
As a precaution (having read about it on forums) I had taken an additional insurance from a French shop specialized in hiking and mountaineering (le Vieux Campeur) to cover more events.
Good thing I did because I ended up having to be evacuated for something that was initially considered as acute altitude sickness and turned out to be a lot more life threatening once in the hospital.
Many peaks in the western US are in that range. Lots more with several exceeding if you include Alaska in “the western US”.
Contiguous means the 48 connected (contiguous) states. It never includes Alaska.
And even though definitionally/officially continental could include it (it's in the same continent), in common use "continental US" is not meant to include Alaska either.
Even if you don't feel it, the altitude still makes a difference, though. I recall doing two-a-day hell weeks at Big Bear at the end of summer cross-country training in high school and there was a 5k up there at the end of that week. We all got worse times than typical at sea level, and somewhat amusingly, I recall a high school senior from Rim of the World High School (who lived up there) getting 2nd place overall the first year I ever competed in that race, beating way more seasoned competitors just because he was used to the altitude.
It works in reverse, too. There was an officer in my Armor Basic Officer Course from Colorado who gave himself rhabdo during the two-mile test the first week we in-processed, apparently because he was so used to altitude that he hadn't quite acclimated to Fort Knox atmosphere.
Altitude sickness typically starts after 12–24 hours. If you climb high and come back down in the same day, there is usually not enough time for the symptoms to start. And 11,500ft is not that high altitude. People routinely fly to Cuzco, La Paz, Lhasa, and Leh from sea level, and most of them suffer no serious ill effects.
The better your heart is at getting oxygen into your muscles and organs, the better it can compensate for less oxygen.
Not a bulletproof solution to altitude sickness, but it's definitely one of a lot of variables that matters. It's also just true that some people are way more susceptible regardless, I've got friends who run competitive marathon times who get splitting headaches flying from sea level to denver.
Not really. Altitude sickness seems quite random in who it effects worst. I trekked to the top of Mera Peak (~21,000 ft) many years ago. 3 of the fittest people in our party got altitude sickness and didn't make it to the peak.
Other amusing things from that trip: we went up there the 3rd of July, and it snowed. We charged the car in Colorado Springs before we left, got up to the peak with 36% battery remaining. My wife worried we wouldn't be able to make it back. Got back to CS with ~70% battery left.
It's a tiring climb and a tiring descent, but I never felt a hint of altitude-related discomfort.
I lived near sea level and didn't often go anywhere more than about 1,000 feet above sea level in daily activities.
“Continental” would be in Europe.
"On May 14, 1959, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names issued the following definitions based partially on the reference in the Alaska Omnibus Bill, which defined the Continental United States as "the 49 States on the North American Continent and the District of Columbia..." The Board reaffirmed those definitions on May 13, 1999."
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_United_States
"The contiguous United States, also known as the U.S. mainland, officially referred to as the conterminous United States, consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia of the United States in central North America."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiguous_United_States
"Continental" is also a casual way to refer to European things, but that's a different overloading of the term. Continental is not confined to meaning "European", except where the context implies so (e.g. "continental philosophy", or "continental breakfast"). A leftover from the British refering to Europe as "the continent", it being the nearby continental body next to them.