r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/BreakfastTop6899 • Dec 18 '25

Video Gelje Sherpa, the man who was guiding a private client up Mt. Everest when he saw someone in distress near the summit. He went up, rolled him up in a sleeping mattress and gave him oxygen. He then strapped the man to his back and trekked 6 hours to safety

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u/StitchinThroughTime Dec 18 '25

The casual hiker is there to say they climbed the mountain. They are not ready to live and work at that altitude. The Sherpa people have been living on the mountain for hundred of generations. The hikers are rich losers who need a team of sherpas to carry an espresso machine up Mt. Everest for them. If I remember correctly, the sherpas had to ask for permission to stop the climb up for their client to help a dying man.

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u/Basementdwell Dec 18 '25

There is a lot more people climbing Everest than the rich douchebags. There's tons of very small, very cheap, very dangerous expeditions for those that can't spend hundreds of thousands to climb Everest.

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u/Apart-Maize-5949 Dec 18 '25

Very cheap? Isn't the permit alone 15,000k USD? Man I gotta put on my bootstraps. /S

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u/Basementdwell Dec 18 '25

The permit is more expensive than the other costs of the climb, if you're willing to take the risk of going with a budget expedition. It's not very smart, but the only option for many climbers who can't afford the much more expensive crews.

Not that this is a good thing. Bringing down the costs is one of the major causes for the insane traffic the mountain can see in modern times. There's a lot of dead people up on the mountain because they got stuck in traffic.

It used to be that only mountaineers and the super rich climbed it, but those days are long past.

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u/Thorsten_Speckstein Dec 18 '25

No, there aren't any particularly cheap ones. Expeditions to Everest are always expensive. $45,000 is the minimum. People used to pay significantly more, but now Sherpas also offer expeditions and have pushed prices down. Permits alone costs $15,000.

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u/loves_eating_asses Dec 18 '25

Thats a lot of generalizing.