• grahamsz
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          31 year ago

          But most mountaineers get by without having to hire people to carry their shit for them. Certainly people here in Colorado use guides from time to time, but i’ve never heard of anyone using a porter. Maybe i’m ignorant, but it seems like mountaineers only use porters in the himalayas because they are cheap and disposable.

          Perhaps if you can’t summit a mountain without another human to carry your equipment then it should be ok to not summit that mountain.

            • grahamsz
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              21 year ago

              Thanks for the terminology - that makes it easier!

              Only very few people have accomplished climbing one of the 14 peaks “alpine style”.

              I’m quite ok with that.

              If the rockies were 28k instead of 14k then I still don’t think there’d be a situation where we hire poor villagers from the outskirts of Denver to put their lives on the line. I really believe the high peaks are summited expedition-style because the poverty makes that practical, which in turn allows many more people to reach the top

                • grahamsz
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                  11 year ago

                  I think I take more exception with the uneven make-up of the expedition team. If 4 americans want to form a expedition to summit K2 then I applaud that, all of them are committed to what they are doing and are choosing to take an extreme risk with no coercion. But when half the team makers are living in literal poverty and are only choosing to take the risk because they have few other options, that seems kinda messed up.

                • @blargh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  11 year ago

                  That woman… how stubborn can you be?

                  How can you not realize the insanity of continuing when what takes others 20 minutes takes you 6 hours.

                  Could it have been some form of suicide?

      • Zima
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        11 year ago

        Unless you have no hobbies and no free time You can lead by example and show them.

    • grahamsz
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      41 year ago

      Sure - and i’m sure I could find people who’d play a game of russian roulette for $1M but it’d be massively unethical to hire people to do that.

      So there’s obviously some line - as a society we consider it ethical to hire forestry workers or deep sea fishermen even though they have a significantly higher risk of death that most other professions. I think a 25% death rate is just unethical in the extreme, even Everest is something like 1%.

      • @wahming
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        11 year ago

        Everest appears to be 5%. Where would you draw the line, and how would you justify it?

        • grahamsz
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          11 year ago

          I have no idea, but hiring someone for a job that has a 1 in 20 chance of killing them seems fundamentally immoral - especially given the massive financial imbalance.

          It’s certainly a good philosophical question though

          • @wahming
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            11 year ago

            Yeah, taking it to the extreme, the same logic applies to delivery guys on scooters and motorcycles. There’s definitely no good answer, except maybe that they accepted the risk

            • grahamsz
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              21 year ago

              Looking at it more, there seems to be an entire field of Risk Ethics associated with this.

              Still the most dangerous job in the US is a Commercial Fisherman with a risk of death of 132 per 100,000. That’s a very long way from the risk of dying on Everest or K2.