Everest

wrestlemaniac

NIMAN wrote: »

I see it says Mr Lawless was a member of the group that John Delaney died on.

You'd think that would have put the notion of climbing Everest out of his head given his family situation.

Don't think it says that. Hana lead Delaney's climb also.

tuxy

jasper100 wrote: »

Another misleading article, it says he did it to raise €25000 for charity. This charity nonsense just doesn't cut it. His holiday would have cost in the region of €50K. Tacking on a charity is a means of boosting peoples profiles towards getting sponsorship to help pay for and justify their holiday.


No amount of window dressing will hide the fact that this guy was quite the idiot. He left his young family to go on a personal ego boosting adventure knowing full well he could end up dead. He didn't bother with an 8000M+ warmup climb and the mountain found him out.

I don't understand why media coverage can't get their head around the fact insurance covers the cost of rescue for someone who is alive. Since the story broke it was known that he couldn't be alive and that's why the insurance had already declined to help. The insurance company did not abandon him, they stuck to the terms of the contract.

Crusty Jocks

Thought this was a very good (albeit long) read. Some of the video and images included grim enough. story is a lot more tragic than affluent westerners chasing some kind of badge of honour.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everest-deaths.html

Capt'n Midnight

beveragelady wrote: »

Scott's diary entry from the day he died seems apt. "We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last."

Scott could have made it with better luck or better planning.

Shackleton got within 97 nautical miles of the pole two years earlier but turned back.

Ernest 'a live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn't it?'
Emily 'Yes darling, as far as I am concerned'

JustAThought

Crusty Jocks wrote: »

Thought this was a very good (albeit long) read. Some of the video and images included grim enough. story is a lot more tragic than affluent westerners chasing some kind of badge of honour.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everest-deaths.html

It's perhaps worse because it is impovrished people, living hand to mouth, following their dreams of climbing everest and leaving their wives, children, brothers and parents even more impovrished and destitute having chased their dream and died in its persuit.

bobbyg

tuxy wrote: »

Apologies, it has since come to my attention that the gofundme was started by a dishonest colleague of Seamus and it is them that own the €225,000 raised and not the family. Like many others I too was duped.

Edit: actually I have just realised I can't even verify if that is really the person that started the gofundmepage.

This is surely defamation.

sReq | uTeK

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I don't think that he'd want any dangerous recovery attempts to be undertaken. Every climber knows that if you die on Everest you stay there.

Instead they can have a nice memorial erected and the money raised can go to his wife and young children.

I'm sorry but WHY should his wife and kids get any money?

Are we to setup funds for every Tom, dick and harry that dies now?

The guy was a selfish fool, going in an adventure under the pretence of a charitable goodness. Leaving behind a pregnant wife and 4 year old child to risk his life. Why didn't he embark on this journey when he no dependents and no responsibilities? Pull the other one. Why should the decent people of Ireland and afar who put their families before risks pick up the slack for someone who clearly didn't think or have a plan if it all went south.

As for the poster 20 pages back about being under the thumb ahhaha. I'm a happily married man with 3 kids and whilst I'd like to do a lot of risky stuff I simply wouldn't as people depend on me.

Dante7

I knew very little about Everest before this tragedy. But having read and viewed some more I can understand why he would want to do it. He had pictures of Everest on his bedroom wall when he was a kid. And he finally made it.

I understand people saying he was selfish and that the gofundme is disingenuous, but I totally get why he did it. It's part of our DNA to push and explore.

RIP Shay.

qxtasybe1nwfh2

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Instead they can have a nice memorial erected and the money raised can go to his wife and young children.

The money should go to Barrettstown.

sReq | uTeK

Dante7 wrote: »

I knew very little about Everest before this tragedy. But having read and viewed some more I can understand why he would want to do it. He had pictures of Everest on his bedroom wall when he was a kid. And he finally made it.

I understand people saying he was selfish and that the gofundme is disingenuous, but I totally get why he did it. It's part of our DNA to push and explore.

RIP Shay.

Do it before he he'd a wife who was pregnant and a 4 year old.

Crusty Jocks

Dante7 wrote: »

He had pictures of Everest on his bedroom wall when he was a kid. And he finally made it.

RIP Shay.

He didn’t make it, he didn’t make anything. Making it up a high altitude peak is not even close to half the battle. He failed spectacularly in fundraising and in his bid to conquer the mountain. It’s a disaster for him and more so for the people he has left behind. There should be absolutely no rose tinted hindsight vision of his f*cking bedroom poster and ‘he finally made it’ to be celebrated other than perhaps the lowest bottom barrel red top tabloid sh*te there is still publishing.

Fully agree on the RIP Shay bit.

Dante7

Good docu drama about Ed Hillary's first summit.

https://youtu.be/cdxTe8fZ2Pw

Fotish

redmgar wrote: »

They don't need that amount, the 750 is a limit place by GoFundMe if you don't put a limit.

Any amount that exceeds the cost in a recovery mission (successful or not) will probably go to the nominated charity. And even if you were to believe the theories proposed here that it will be kept by the wife, these same people are very concerned about the child's future as they are stating how selfish he was to leave them.

What nominated charity ? There is no mention of any ‘ nominated charity ‘ on the Go Fund Me page ( that I can see anyway ) ?

liosnagceann75

Crusty Jocks wrote: »

He didn’t make it, he didn’t make anything. Making it up a high altitude peak is not even close to half the battle. He failed spectacularly in fundraising and in his bid to conquer the mountain. It’s a disaster for him and more so for the people he has left behind. There should be absolutely no rose tinted hindsight vision of his f*cking bedroom poster and ‘he finally made it’ to be celebrated other than perhaps the lowest bottom barrel red top tabloid sh*te there is still publishing.

Fully agree on the RIP Shay bit.

Did you have to post this nonsense. Have a bit of respect

Sunrise_Sunset

Crusty Jocks wrote: »

Thought this was a very good (albeit long) read. Some of the video and images included grim enough. story is a lot more tragic than affluent westerners chasing some kind of badge of honour.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everest-deaths.html

Just...wow.
Very interesting indeed.
I might have nightmares after reading that.

Muahahaha

BarryD2 wrote: »

Interesting that no mention of European Alpine experience which would have been/ be the conventional route in terms of gaining climbing experience - Ireland/ Scotland... Alps... Greater Ranges. I suppose that's just an approach now - skip the Alps and onto the bigger stuff. Of above, Island Peak & Mera are considered 'trekking peaks' AFAIK, but Denali in North America is said to be a serious proposition - high, exposed to bad weather, lot of hauling and long routes on ice & snow. So a lot of experience would have been gained there.

I've 'climbed' Mera Peak nearby to Everest and can confirm it is a trekking peak, it is known as the highest place in the world you can get to just by walking up with no technical climbing ability required. You wear crampons and are trained in using your ice axe to arrest a fall but the trail to the top is relatively wide with little to no chance of falling off the side. Neighbouring Island Peak (6,139m) is the same bar needing to be roped for the last 200m or so. Neither of them are technical climbs and both are very popular with trekkers who want to summit a big mountain without too much risk.

Anyway I once had lofty ambitions of giving Everest a go myself but gave those up after going up Mera Peak. It wasnt the hike up that bothered me but the thinness of the air. The top is 6,476m and up there you only have about 50% oxygen available to your lungs, so every breath is like half a breath which tires you out very quickly. I can only imagine what it would be like at the top of Everest at 8,848m where you have only 30% available to you.

As mentioned further up the thread Seamus 'climbed' both Island Peak and Mera Peak as training for Everest. He also summited Denali in Alaska (6,190m) which is a more technical climb than Island or Mera but still not all that high in relation to Everest. The reason why they say you should always climb an 8,000m mountain in practice for Everest is so you can see how your body handles the altitude at 8,000m. If you feel good then Everest is a possibility for you, if you don't feel good at 8,000m then getting to the 8,848m of Everest is going to be a very risky proposition.

There are 14 peaks of 8,000m+ in the world with nine of them being in Nepal. Typically someone who wants to summit Everest needs to summit one of these first so they can find out what they are like at truly high altitudes. The 'easier' ones that are circa 8,100m are Cho Oyo and Manslu which is where the guiding companies bring clients to see if they would be able for Everest. Seamus skipped this step and instead went from 6,000m+ mountains to trying for the highest mountain in the world. This was not good planning on his behalf imo and a part of me feels he put way too much currency in his ambition to not only to summit Everest but also to do it by the age of 40, with his 40th birthday falling due in July of this year. He put himself under time pressure and mountaineering does not work like that. He probably had visions of his 40th birthday party and the craic telling his mates about his tales from Everest and just decided to go for it despite being relatively inexperienced and a complete novice in the 8000m+ death zone.

It seems to me he put an unnecessary time constraint on himself and as a result he never truly tested himself out by climbing a different 8,000m+mountain, many of which are just a few kilometers from Everest. Had he taken an extra year and done that expedition he might have realised that Everest wasn't for him at all. I know I realised that after Mera Peak but he went straight from Mera to Everest. It was a step too far and he was in too much of a rush imo.

jasper100

liosnagceann75 wrote: »

Did you have to post this nonsense. Have a bit of respect

Its not nonsense.

He is dead right. The guy failed badly.

Pretending it was for charity showed the type of person he was, gathering in other peoples money to pay for his holiday.

tuxy

jasper100 wrote: »

Its not nonsense.

He is dead right. The guy failed badly.

Pretending it was for charity showed the type of person he was, gathering in other peoples money to pay for his holiday.

I agree with some of what you've said however I believe most the funding was from sponsorship form businesses. The fundraiser for the charity was separate and they planned to raise €25k by sending 4 Irish people to the top of Everest.
So spend around €200k to raise 25k although I think they only managed 7k for the charity so more like spend 200k to raise 7k.

Now perhaps the fact they were also raising money for charity helped them gain corporate sponsorship I'm not sure if it was a factor.
Anyway the fact is the public were not paying for the trip it was a combination of self funded and business sponsorship funded.

Pulsating Star

Crusty Jocks wrote: »

Thought this was a very good (albeit long) read. Some of the video and images included grim enough. story is a lot more tragic than affluent westerners chasing some kind of badge of honour.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everest-deaths.html

Thanks for the link, a good read as you said.
Just took an excerpt from it in relation to the possibility for body recovery.
A little after they also spoke about abseiling into one of the crevasses below the Balcony to retrieve a body, one of the areas most likely to be the resting place going by reports to date. Cost to recover two bodies given was 90k with helicopter time being the most expensive part.

The danger increased with every foot of altitude toward the summit, where the air grew thinner and the chances of rescue, should anything go wrong, grew slimmer. The same threats faced by climbers from around the world were faced by Sherpas from Nepal. But Mingma Sherpa, an experienced climber himself, said no mission to recover bodies was off limits, if the price was right.

“Above the South Summit, from the South Summit to the summit, we might have to think about it,” Mingma Sherpa said. “But below the Balcony, the only question is weather. I cannot fight the weather. The technical part, we can handle. The weather can kill us.”

Hoboo

tuxy wrote: »

I agree with some of what you've said however I believe most the funding was from sponsorship form businesses. The fundraiser for the charity was separate and they planned to raise €25k by sending 4 Irish people to the top of Everest.
So spend around €200k to raise 25k although I think they only managed 7k for the charity so more like spend 200k to raise 7k.

Now perhaps the fact they were also raising money for charity helped them gain corporate sponsorship I'm not sure if it was a factor.
Anyway the fact is the public were not paying for the trip it was a combination of self funded and business sponsorship funded.

Any links to the corporate sponsorship received? Can't find a thing.

Clearly says on the sponsor me page any funds left over AFTER the cost of the expedition will go to Barrettstown.

Although I'll expect in a couple of weeks when reality is accepted that he's not coming off the mountain the funds raised for his rescue will go to Barrettstown. Which will be a fitting tribute if that happens.

tuxy

Hoboo wrote: »

Any links to the corporate sponsorship received? Can't find a thing.

https://irishsevensummits.com/everest-2019-interview/

It's one of the questions near the end.

spider2

I hear there's another Irishman's body there since 2011.

tuxy

spider2 wrote: »

I hear there's another Irishman's body there since 2011.

Yes, John Delaney who also left behind a pregnant wife.
And another connection Irish climber Noel Hanna was part of the team both times.

Hoboo

tuxy wrote: »

https://irishsevensummits.com/everest-2019-interview/

It's one of the questions near the end.

Doesn't mention money. So no way of calculating total raised minus costs. Coulx have got 30k between the sponsors, added some themselves, and Barrettstown got nothing.

Western Lowland Gorilla

Gwynplaine wrote: »

That helicopter video is amazing. I'd there's only a few days in the year that that is possible.

Which helicopter video?

Hoboo

Hoboo wrote: »

Doesn't mention money. So no way of calculating total raised minus costs. Coulx have got 30k between the sponsors, added some themselves, and Barrettstown got nothing.

There’s a list of donors for the whole group here, includes all climbs in the 7 mountains challenge. https://irishsevensummits.com/charity/

pc7

Deleted User wrote: »

There’s a list of donors for the whole group here, includes all climbs in the 7 mountains challenge. https://irishsevensummits.com/charity/

Have they only raised $43,000 for charity since 2007? or am I reading it wrong?

Hoboo

[Deleted User] wrote: »

There’s a list of donors for the whole group here, includes all climbs in the 7 mountains challenge. https://irishsevensummits.com/charity/

That's up to 2015, for multiple climbs of various mountains over a number of years, from individual sponsors.

I was looking for the corporate sponsorship amounts and how much Barrettstown received if anything, for this climb, Everest 2019. Highly unlikely those figures are in the public domain.

jasper100

I see the female climber in his group is 40 years old with 4 young children at home.

What a selfish person.

Snow Garden

Crusty Jocks wrote: »

Thought this was a very good (albeit long) read. Some of the video and images included grim enough. story is a lot more tragic than affluent westerners chasing some kind of badge of honour.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everest-deaths.html

Superb article. Everyone here should read it.