Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmh9p2 wrote on December 10, 2022 at 4:43 AM

The first place on Mt Everest where a body can plausibly disappear is the Khumbu icefall. It is on the Nepal side of Everest, and is the first and and most deadly obstacles climbers pass.

The icefall is always moving. It’s worse in the day, when it’s melting, but even at night, there’s a high risk of avalanches, there are massive crevasses that you cross by, I shit you not, aluminum ladders laid on their side. The ground might look firm, and be firm for a while, but secretly be a snow bridge with a pocket of air under it. It’s frankly terrifying.

(For the record, Sherpas climb the icefall at a much, much higher rate than clients. First, the icefall doctors map the route and lay the ladders. Then, high altitude porters carry all the supplies up for the higher camps. Only then do the clients go, accompanied by Sherpa guides. It is incredibly unjust, in a way that I don’t think most climbers realize, because the icefall is a number’s game. The more times you cross it, the more likely you are to die. A lot of deaths in Everest are avoidable. Icefall deaths are not.)

So our killer needs to carry a body on their back up to the icefall, at night, when no other climbers are going, dump the body in a crevasse, and come back.

Did I mention you have to use lights? And that people are watching all the time, trying to see if the weather/ conditions are ok for groups to go up? And that the whole icefall is visible from camp?

And for the record, the icefall is where most of the bodies at the Nepal base camp come from. Avalanches from the icefall have hit base camp before. Sometimes… parts… come down, especially as Everest gets warmer and the icefall becomes even more dangerous.

(Cont.)

Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmixs8 wrote on December 10, 2022 at 5:00 AM

Let’s talk about how people die on Everest.

Because there have (allegedly) been murders on Everest, but it’s not the sort of thing you can be charged for. High Crimes by Michael Kodas is a really heartbreaking account of the ways people can die and be killed.

The deadliest part of Everest is the icefall. The place where most people die is the descent. There’s something called “summit fever” that kills a lot of climbers. It’s not a physical thing- it’s the desire to keep going, even though you know you should turn back. Climbing Everest is incredibly expensive, and requires so much time and effort. For a lot of people, it’s a lifelong dream. And to give up on it when the top’s right there… well.

A lot of the injustices described in High Crimes are driven by summit fever. So remember how I said high-altitude porters take everything up to the higher camps? One of the items they bring is supplemental oxygen. Some climbers use oxygen, others don’t, but it dramatically increases your rate of survival. If a person makes it to the higher camps using oxygen and suddenly runs out , they have an even higher chance of dying than someone who has never used it while acclimating.

Did I mention the porters set up camp with all the supplies and then come back down? They have to, the human body starts to decay if you live any higher than base camp.

So oxygen goes missing. Sleeping bags go missing. So does good, although that matters less.

And sometimes people who could’ve been saved are left to die, because helping someone unprepared or unlucky means you won’t go to the summit.

Don’t get me wrong, there are so many heroes on Everest. But there’s also monsters of a very different source than serial killers. That’s how you get bodies on Everest. That, and because Everest is fundamentally, heartbreakingly, dangerous, and sometimes you do everything right and still die.

Last cont, I hope. Let’s talk about Sherpas real quick.

Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmni4h wrote on December 10, 2022 at 5:49 AM

Sherpa is both a specific name for an ethnic and language group, and a general job title. However, the two are wrapped up in each other in really fraught ways that I (not Nepali, not a Sherpa) am gonna try to be really careful about, and still probably make mistakes.

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary were the first people to climb Everest. Norgay was a Sherpa. Climbing Everest requires a lot of support, and because of Norgay and Sherpa’s familiarity with Everest, foreign climbers overwhelming preferred hiring Sherpas to be high-altitude guides and porters. This kind of continued to this day, to the extent that non-ethnically Sherpa Nepali will try to pass as Sherpa to employers and even coworkers.

However. Your serial killer would have to be at least Nepali, and possibly actually Sherpa, to pass as a high-altitude porter.

There’s not a lot of sustainable jobs in Nepal. Being a mountain guide is unspeakably dangerous and demanding. It also pays a lot. There’s a lot of complicated feelings around the work. But the fact remains that because of the money, and the opportunities, it’s still dominated by big-s Sherpas. (And from what I can read there’s some tension between Sherpas and other Nepali ethnic groups because of this. Low altitude porters get paid very little for supplying the camps/ the trek to Everest base camp, and those jobs are usually held by Tamang and Rai people, who don’t have access to the same mountain economy, and often aren’t allowed to sleep in the tea houses.) (This article again).

Speaking of the base camp trek… unfortunately, there’s a lot of other places in Nepal where serial killers can hide bodies.

So that’s where it’s at. It’s big and complicated and makes me really sad a lot of the time.

More resources:

Sherpa- an incredible documentary about a recent tragedy and it’s repercussions.

Sherpa Conversation and Basic Words- a phrasebook

Buried in the Sky- about K2, but incredible read and a lot of information, both about death in the Himalayas and the lives of people who work in them.

Just for fun:

I have… complicated feelings about people traveling to Everest to climb it. It’s framed as heroic a lot of the time, and I own that it’s difficult, but… well.

That said, Half the Sky is a musical about just that, and the soundtrack is beautiful and currently costs $0. Think of it as a palate cleanser.

Final thoughts

Thanks for anyone who has read this far. Thank you for your prompt, OP- and sorry again.

Pease don’t climb Everest.

ILoveLongDogs t1_izmo2lq wrote on December 10, 2022 at 5:55 AM

Dude, what. Why go to all that bother, what did OP do to you?

Also, most of what you were saying about moving the bodies and hiding the evidence I think is massively off base to what was intended. I thought the idea of the prompt was "work as a seemingly legitimate guide then bump them off and make it look like an accident".

Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmpfg2 wrote on December 10, 2022 at 6:12 AM

Totally fair, and honestly it did get away from me. If I’d typed this out all at once, I probably wouldn’t have posted it.

The plot you mentioned is (allegedly) something that happened- it’s the main storyline in High Crimes. However, guide and Sherpa are not interchangeable, and honestly that’s the main reason I started posting- When you’re writing about a different culture, it’s worth knowing some cultural context. And this isn’t just sherpa the job, it’s Sherpa the people, and honestly I get really angry about the cost they pay for other people to climb.

That, and I figured people reading the prompts might want to know more about Everest. Nothing against OP, they seem perfectly lovey. I just wanted to add some context, and it spiraled. Sorry to you as well.

canofwhoops t1_iznahre wrote on December 10, 2022 at 11:04 AM

Personally I came in with mild interest for a writing prompt and came out educated on the basics of climbing everest and a new understanding of the dangers as well as the Sherpas.

So thank you! All that effort writing was definitely not wasted it was a good read!

Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izpai9q wrote on December 10, 2022 at 8:45 PM

Thank you, friend- I’m glad you enjoyed it

astillac t1_izmqbcj wrote on December 10, 2022 at 6:22 AM

It was an award-winning info dump and I kinda fell in love a little bit. XD

Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmqheg wrote on December 10, 2022 at 6:24 AM

Aw, thank you! I think the other reason it got out of hand is that I haven’t talked to my usual infodump person for like a year and I think it boiled over. (Calling her soon tho!)

[WP] It’s a common know fact that if a person dies climbing Mount Everest the body is left on the mountain. That’s why a serial killer likes to disguise himself as a Sherpa in order to hide his victims.

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Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmetsb wrote on December 10, 2022 at 4:20 AM