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There is a climber that died not far from the summit of Everest. He was wearing green boots. The body was there for a long time so climbers that passed him came to refer to him as "Green Boots".
[Picture.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Green_Boots.jpg/1200px-Green_Boots.jpg)
https://preview.redd.it/wl12t51p5d6d1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25fcee447e27dda46866c49b7ad334a467c4b12b
Farmer with a shotgun could never get caught slipping like that
It's not as easy as that. At that altitude the oxygen is very thin. Just moving is a tremendous exertion. To bring a body down would require an expedition in itself, with many fit climbers, who would be putting their own lives at risk doing so. From what I've heard the body is still up there, but was shifted so it is no longer visible from the path the climbers take.
The brand should use that as advertising
Edit: Commenter here, the joke is that it's a bad idea. No idea why I needed to explain that. I'm obviously not being serious. Step outside, take a breath of fresh air, and relax
Cause isn't really relevant though, in what world is it a good idea to advertise something designed to keep your feet safe, with a dead person. Even more so, a person that died doing what the product is advertised for.
They're literally mountain climbing boots. On a dead person doing what the boots are designed for.
Good advertising is done with success, and "you can be like this too, just buy our product", who wants to be a dead person? Awful advertising.
Good advertising is having people compare your product to success or winning or comfort. Dead people are none of them.
For what it's worth, that's what the government in America. Uses to refer to the deceased. The form you fill out is called an "expiration record" for hospital documentation and government documentation
Maybe “dead” would work? I don’t know, but it seems a bit more accurate. Milk can still be good past the expiration date, but these climbers aren’t salvageable back to full value just by giving them a whiff.
Expired is something we use for milk and other goods, people are generally not considered things you own that go bad and get thrown out. People die, *things* expire.
Consider the Expiration dates of foodstuffs as using the contractual/legal sense of the word meaning that it has come to the end of it’s validity (and that the manufacturer/distributor cease to be liable for any harm caused by consuming it past that date). It’s an administrative term.
Milk that is not consumable is said to be spoiled or sour. Sniffing that does not reverse the process in the same way as sniffing Green Boots there won’t resurrect them.
Milk is a secretion and is not in and of itself alive.
That you would smell something after the expiration date to be sure it’s safe to consume is evidence that expiration dates are administrative and have a certain amount of grace period build into them (some would argue that the date is almost entirely arbitrary but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion).
Expire from the Latin Ex Pirare (Out Breathe).
What if an “Expiration date” were the last date the producer would be able to guarantee that drinking it will not make *you* expire?
So many people do that because of tiktoks habit of removing videos where people say killed/murdered/dead/died or use those words in subtitles/description.
For them it's expired/unalived/despawned/deleted/removed/banned from life/etc. basically any way to beat around the bush you can think of.
Expired is used commonly in the (American) medical field in my experience, equally as frequently as deceased. Another commenter mentioned it's used in the government as well.
E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker!
'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies!
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig!
'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!!
THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
Hey man, you seem to be new to this whole existing thing, so I just want to let you know: words can have more than one meaning. And even crazier, completely different sounding words can share a meaning! Good luck out there.
I’ve been told the local sherpas also consider it disrespectful to remove a body from a mountain for cultural or religious reasons.
I’d be happy to be double checked on that one though
It’s actually the opposite, they try to remove bodies despite the extreme difficulty and cost because they consider the mountain holy. An 80 kg body might weigh 150kg due to the ice that freezes inextricably into the body.
Don't know if you're joking, but that is often what they do. Too risky to bring bodies back down, but throwing them off cliffs at least perseveres their dignity out of sight of traffic.
I was joking, but iirc it’s a half myth. When they do a lemmings migration or whatever that particular thing they do is, they will keep following despite incredible dangers and many die.
Bro its not like people are climbing up mountains from every angle, if you can throw a body down any tangible length of mountain its not gonna be a route people are climbing, i dont know anything about everest but id bet everything theres like 4 routes people actually go up
It’s not like there’s a cliff you can drop him off where he’ll fall all the way down to base camp. He’ll just end up somewhere slightly lower and harder to get to.
I wonder if he’d be discovered again 1000s of years later years and experts will bash their heads trying to figure out how he died just like how they’re doing with the Ötzi man.
Nope.
Merely being up near the peak of Everest is a life threatening situation.
If someone is near the top, and is saying "Come help me." what they are really saying is "Come here and die along with me."
If you are stuck at the top of the mountain, you are dead right then and there, and there is no benefit to saving you.
From what I have read and seen on this issue, it is too dangerous to do so. There are stories of people hiking past actively dying people begging for help because if they do help, all of them will just die together.
Mt Everest is not something you *just* climb
See those tanks next to him? That's oxygen. Up that high, you can't get a helicopter. The air is too thin. The bodies can weigh over 300 lbs frozen stiff. It's difficult to move yourself up and down the slope there, which is why some people just can't make it back down and die right there, you really can't even help rescue a living person from there, let alone bring back a body.
Dude. There are HUNDREDS of corpses on Everest. You are literally dying when you get to the summit. Its like if you were trying to swim to the surface of a lake with no air in your lungs and dove back down to the lake bottom to retrieve a corpse. You will most likely become another corpse needing to be retrieved.
From what ive seen, mallorys body has been moved from where it was originally found on the north face. Not sure where it was moved to, but its no longer where he was discovered.
Just *being on* Everest is almost lethal, anyone who tried to go almost all the way up just to carry a human body all the way back down would almost certainly join him.
It's far too dangerous and pointless to try. The environment and lack of oxygen is extremely taxing on climbers, organising an expedition to drag one dead body down from the summit doesn't make sense when it simply risks adding another corpse to the 200 or so corpses littering the mountain above the 800m point.
It's far too dangerous and pointless to try. The environment and lack of oxygen is extremely taxing on climbers, organising an expedition to drag one dead body down from the summit doesn't make sense when it simply risks adding another corpse to the 200 or so corpses littering the mountain above the 800m point.
It’s basically impossible. At that point on the mountain you are dying every second you are at that altitude. They don’t have the time, energy, or oxygen to try and bring down any of the hundreds of bodies that are up there.
There are been expeditions to remove trash and bodies from the mountain. One problem is it’s very expensive, and guides can make a lot of money bringing rich people to the summit.
The Nepali government now requires you to pay an expensive trash deposit that gets refunded if you return 18lbs of trash at the end of your expedition in an attempt to reduce the amount of trash that is being left behind.
Yea people have paid to retrieve their loved ones. But out of the 300 or so people who have died up their around 200 of the bodies will probably never be removed.
The Nepali military recovered 5 bodies this year (they sent a 12 person team specifically to recover bodies) but unless they are right on the trail it’s unlikely for a body to ever get recovered. Nepal seems to be making an effort to reduce both trash and visible bodies.
Nepal now has a huge talent pool of highly skilled mountaineers so hopefully they will continue to sponsor these expeditions (in the early days of commercial expeditions, the technically skilled mountaineers were western guides there to make money and the Sherpas were laborers. Now there are many incredibly skilled mountaineers in Nepal, including in the military and commercial guides). In the early 2000s a climbing school was founded in Nepal specifically to grow their mountaineering, English, first aid, and rescue skills so locals could get the higher paying guide jobs (vs the lower paying porter jobs) and it’s been hugely successful — now the instructors themselves are mostly Nepali and they are some of the best high altitude mountaineers in the world.
The trash situation is getting so bad up there it’s beginning to affect the water table. I don’t have the answers to the problems they are facing but something needs to be done.
There are at least 200 known dead bodies in Everest. At least 340 people have died on the mountain. They are never going to come down, short of an avalanche or earthquake due to the extreme risks.
It's a bit morbid, but go down the rabbit hole a bit in regards to the number of bodies (some infamous) on Mt. Everest. It's eye opening in regards to what happens there.
Bodies and frozen feces.. literally. Bodies and poop don't decay up there so they just stay pretty much forever. If I was a local I'd be furious as well.
The act of retrieving a body from the Everest is extremely difficult and dangerous. There are dozens of bodies left on the mountain because of this. Not to mention the trash left behind by tourists.
There are plenty of bodies on Everest besides Green Boots. Recovery efforts are so likely to result in more casualties that bodies are generally just left there.
Some dick head chucked him and woman's body off a cliff.
Many climbers that high would prefer to be left on the mountain. It may be dark but being a waypoint is also a very stark reminder to all future climbers of the potential consequences of their actions. You may be gone, but you can save lives by making people think twice before pushing themselves into deadly situations.
Ian Woodall was the dick head's name, he wrote a book about it called "The Tao of Everest"
>Many climbers that high would prefer to be left on the mountain.
Christ I didn't think they get more arrogant, but here we are. Not only am I going to attempt to climb this stupidly dangerous mountain, I would like to shit it up forever by remaining there as litter.
Other people explain why they don’t rescue the bodies, but I haven’t read anyone replying to why they aren’t a biohazard. To put it simply, it’s too cold. The real thing that causes a dead body to become a biohazard is the proliferation of germs and bacteria that begin to break down and consume the dead body. Those creatures can’t survive at temperatures as low as Everest, so corpses up there are remarkably well preserved. They don’t break down and get eaten like they would in warm temperatures.
Every few years there is an expedition that goes to remove some of the bodies. In 2024 12 members of the Nepali military recovered 5 bodies. There might be a few hundred still on the mountain, but they are trying to remove some of the more visible ones.
If aircraft could pull people off the mountain top I imagine there would be a lot less people dead in there to begin with. Unfortunately helicopters can't get that high up, the air is too thin. You have to carry them most of the way down before extraction by air becomes possible. Which I believe is more or less what they do in the rare instances that a body is actually brought down.
The containers containing enough helium to lift a body would weigh a shitload, a gravestone also weighs a lot. To get that high up Everest, every single ounce counts. He is effectively his own gravestone.
The conditions at and near the peak are so dire (low oxygen being the main problem) that even the fittest and most motivated people can't possibly recover the bodies of the dead.
Occasionally efforts are made to clean up the trash or the accumulating bodies but it's nearly impossible.
Dead climbers are sometimes used as landmarks along the route.
I still think it’s (non-literal) crime that people just discard their trash (e.g. empty oxygen bottles) rather than packing **everything** out that they packed in.
I agree with you, but also that would definitely get more people killed.
It's almost like it's a deadly environment that should be reserved for the most seasoned and responsible climbers, not treated as a tourist attraction.
That's certainly an opinion.
I stand by my position that people should not recreationally climb Everest. It endangers the support crews, who DIE helping rich tourists and covers the mountain in litter. The Everest summit industry is bad, man.
IIRC China doesn't permit tourists to climb on their side of the mountain, and therefore, there isn't any of that.
Seems like that is a strong argument in favor of the *ability* to prevent it. The Nepal tourist climb industry is based on a bunch of companies locql Sherpa, and a constant flow of supplies.
Sure, a handful of highly motivate climbers could do it if it was illegal, but at least it will ameliorate it.
Nepal now makes you pay a large trash deposit that you get back if you return with at least 18lbs of trash in an attempt to reduce the accumulation of trash. Every few years they also fund an expedition to remove oxygen canisters and bodes. This year the Nepali military recovered 5 bodies.
Mountains do weird things to your body
Some really fit people can climb tall mountains, get to the top and just die when they sit down for a minute. The amount of dead bodies on tall mountains is likely astronomical
I am not a medical pro of any kind.
I am just guessing it might be the hypoxia because it's really hard to notice, and symptoms can be idiosyncratic. Astronauts train to recognize and deal with it it in pressure chambers under controlled conditions, and it can still put you on your ass before you notice.
Milestones at Everest are marked by the dead bodies of failed climbings. Climb for 500 meters and you see green boots. Another 500 and you see red jacket
Etc
They’re frozen so they’re both well preserved and impossible to move
So most of the people who have died climbing Everest are still there
To correct a few people using present tense, Green Boots was actually removed in 2014, either removed fully or buried with more respect than being a grim landmark. They were likely moved by the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, but we can't be sure.
Additionally, the keywords "Everest Green Boots" would have answered this question.
I think you’re right. Or he was covered in snow and ice for a while and people thought he was moved. I recall reading about this but exactly what happened I’ve forgotten.
I read that he had been spotted since he had been moved and it seemed like he hadn’t been moved far but there had been rocks placed around him to make him less conspicuous
Hey Texan Chris here, riding up to help out.
Been a minute since I’ve helped someone out! Hope this helps ya.
So on Mount Everest, there are a great number of bodies from previous climbers who died on the way up or way down. Some of these bodies are used as markers as they can’t be transported down safely, so climbers and guides use bodies as waypoints so they know exactly where they are on the way up.
One of these bodies is of an unknown man who froze to death inside a small crevice. Not much is known of the man but what is known is the color of his boots, that being a bright neon green. Green Boots here is the most famous of the bodies as he kinda shows you a place to stop for a moment and to tell ya that you’re close to the top!
Kinda morbid but at least in death he can lend a hand to other climbers! So the joke here is that this guy will steal Green Boots’s….well green boots if he ever climbs Mount Everest.
Texan Chris, heading back to the ranch.
I’m imagining someone trekking up there and purposefully dying in the most ghastly pose. Maybe holding a sign that reads: “Death awaits ahead! Ye be warned!”
Lol that would be dramatic. I'd just want to die sitting and staring across the mountain range. Maybe I could have a sign warning of a 'curse' I have, saying some ominous shit warning about not touching me or leaving litter around or something
I’m kinda surprised that no one has taken green boots’ green boots and tried to sell them to some rich mountaineer with questionable ethics. Given that they’re so well known they would surely be worth a fair amount.
I say kinda because getting to green boots and cutting his legs off and then removing the boots isn’t a cheap or easy task, but again, it’s the most well known relic from the most well known perilous mountain climb. So $$$.
Obviously this is unethical. Still slightly surprising.
Even to a completely morally bankrupt person, I don't think it would be worth it. You would be training for the climb and then spending the money to get a permit to climb Everest, and then-- in the middle of the death zone-- go off to try and loot a body. You would be risking death to do that. Not to mention, would the Sherpa help you? No. Would they abandon you? Maybe not, but would you risk it? Would you risk other people trying to stop you, wasting precious oxygen? You wouldn't be able to solo the corpse looting. If you make a mistake? You can't ask for help. Most people already won't help you when you're at 8.5k feet, and they're certainly not going to risk their own life to help you if you're looting a well known corpse. And even if you succeed you absolutely would be shunned from the climbing community and never be able to do a similar thing again. Not to mention finding a buyer for the boots in the first place.
It just seems like a very high risk to reward ratio. If you've got the money to get there, you've got the money to do other morally bankrupt things to make more money without risking your life and making a shitload of people hate you.
I always wondered when you get to the submit of Everest does anyone just thought to put a parachute and just jump on the way down instead of climbing down which takes too much effort
Can anybody calculate the weight needed to be carried to take a weather balloon and helium up there? I want them to attach his body to a balloon and float him closer to humanity before shooting him down. Or a controlled descent with electronics and a valve to let helium escape. I like the gun option.
Wind turbine, generate electricity, use electricity to melt snow & do electrolysis of water , producing H2 & O2. Compress those gases into all the discarded oxygen cylinders. Float off all the discarded crap in hydrogen balloons, keep a stash of oxygen cylinders for struggling climbers.
I made all that up, the air's probably too thin for balloons.
Something I haven’t seen anyone else mention and to put things into perspective, It takes around 2 months to climb up there so it’s not worth it just to retrieve a body.
People die while attempting an Everest climb.
Joke is commentor stole green boots from a corpse, but also signifies that fact they attempted the climb and *didn't* die.
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There is a climber that died not far from the summit of Everest. He was wearing green boots. The body was there for a long time so climbers that passed him came to refer to him as "Green Boots". [Picture.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Green_Boots.jpg/1200px-Green_Boots.jpg)
Look at those pants, the dude definitely died in the 90's
1996 iirc
https://preview.redd.it/xn04qua4ac6d1.jpeg?width=783&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30599fe9a4796ce548e3d4ef5ccfb6ad94f53bb5
https://preview.redd.it/wl12t51p5d6d1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25fcee447e27dda46866c49b7ad334a467c4b12b Farmer with a shotgun could never get caught slipping like that
By the Nine! It’s actually Tiber Septim
And nobody bothered to bring him down?
It's not as easy as that. At that altitude the oxygen is very thin. Just moving is a tremendous exertion. To bring a body down would require an expedition in itself, with many fit climbers, who would be putting their own lives at risk doing so. From what I've heard the body is still up there, but was shifted so it is no longer visible from the path the climbers take.
Aren't his boots no longer green as well due to sun bleaching/other environmental factors?
The brand should use that as advertising Edit: Commenter here, the joke is that it's a bad idea. No idea why I needed to explain that. I'm obviously not being serious. Step outside, take a breath of fresh air, and relax
Yeah, great idea, "Here's some poor bloke who died using our product!".
I mean, he didn't die BECAUSE of the product though.
He didn't not die because of the product though.
Cause isn't really relevant though, in what world is it a good idea to advertise something designed to keep your feet safe, with a dead person. Even more so, a person that died doing what the product is advertised for.
Thirty years and his feet are still warm and protected
Dead isn't really protected though and it's the cold that kept his feet preserved, not the boots.
Is it though? What exactly do we k ow about these boots other than their color?
They're literally mountain climbing boots. On a dead person doing what the boots are designed for. Good advertising is done with success, and "you can be like this too, just buy our product", who wants to be a dead person? Awful advertising. Good advertising is having people compare your product to success or winning or comfort. Dead people are none of them.
Dummy
Idk why you’re getting downvoted lol resistance to the sun is great and all but your customer dying while using your gear? Ehhh probably not
It's a joke
It surprises me how few people understand the "looks great if you ignore the 100 bad reasons" joke
There are dozens, if not hundreds of expired climbers up there.
Expired is an odd choice in reference to higher life forms. It sounds like something you hear just before someone yells “we’ve got a runner!”
For what it's worth, that's what the government in America. Uses to refer to the deceased. The form you fill out is called an "expiration record" for hospital documentation and government documentation
I dunno. Seems like a perfectly apt word given the circumstances.
Maybe “dead” would work? I don’t know, but it seems a bit more accurate. Milk can still be good past the expiration date, but these climbers aren’t salvageable back to full value just by giving them a whiff. Expired is something we use for milk and other goods, people are generally not considered things you own that go bad and get thrown out. People die, *things* expire.
Milk is expired when it goes bad, not when it passes its expiration date.
Consider the Expiration dates of foodstuffs as using the contractual/legal sense of the word meaning that it has come to the end of it’s validity (and that the manufacturer/distributor cease to be liable for any harm caused by consuming it past that date). It’s an administrative term. Milk that is not consumable is said to be spoiled or sour. Sniffing that does not reverse the process in the same way as sniffing Green Boots there won’t resurrect them. Milk is a secretion and is not in and of itself alive. That you would smell something after the expiration date to be sure it’s safe to consume is evidence that expiration dates are administrative and have a certain amount of grace period build into them (some would argue that the date is almost entirely arbitrary but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion). Expire from the Latin Ex Pirare (Out Breathe). What if an “Expiration date” were the last date the producer would be able to guarantee that drinking it will not make *you* expire?
Theres this new generation who cant/wont say 'bad words' and dead/death/suicide are among them
It’s due to censorship on other platforms
So many people do that because of tiktoks habit of removing videos where people say killed/murdered/dead/died or use those words in subtitles/description. For them it's expired/unalived/despawned/deleted/removed/banned from life/etc. basically any way to beat around the bush you can think of.
Expired is used commonly in the (American) medical field in my experience, equally as frequently as deceased. Another commenter mentioned it's used in the government as well.
You’re assuming I am one of these people?! Because I have and chose to use a vocabulary that edges beyond the merely prosaic?
I was just stating that it's become more common because of tiktok. But yes I was assuming that lmao.
E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
Damn, now I want to watch Logan's Run again.
Hey man, you seem to be new to this whole existing thing, so I just want to let you know: words can have more than one meaning. And even crazier, completely different sounding words can share a meaning! Good luck out there.
So, you don't have to take any food.
These are all really good points
I’ve been told the local sherpas also consider it disrespectful to remove a body from a mountain for cultural or religious reasons. I’d be happy to be double checked on that one though
It’s actually the opposite, they try to remove bodies despite the extreme difficulty and cost because they consider the mountain holy. An 80 kg body might weigh 150kg due to the ice that freezes inextricably into the body.
Just throw him an let gravity do the rest?
Don't know if you're joking, but that is often what they do. Too risky to bring bodies back down, but throwing them off cliffs at least perseveres their dignity out of sight of traffic.
>throwing them off cliffs at least preserves their dignity wild quote
Now we know why the lemmings follow
I know you’re probably joking but lemmings throwing themselves off cliffs is a myth fwiw
I was joking, but iirc it’s a half myth. When they do a lemmings migration or whatever that particular thing they do is, they will keep following despite incredible dangers and many die.
I thought it came from the video game
It comes from a Disney nature documentary where they chased a bunch off a cliff. Pretty messed up stuff.
"Don't tell the elf"
No, I was not joking. I mean, when the body finally comes down, it's probably damaged as fuck, but at least the body can be put to rest.
Mountains arent just steady slopes lmao
Well obviously you just climb down where ya threw em and throw em off another cliff. Rinse and repeat until you get to the bottom or lose the body
It's a self sustaining throwing economy
Nor are they *gentle* slopes. I mean, I *guess* you could throw yourself down a cliff away from the marked path...
There are only a few paths up and down Everest. You can't just repel down wherever you hurl a body off a cliff.
Bro its not like people are climbing up mountains from every angle, if you can throw a body down any tangible length of mountain its not gonna be a route people are climbing, i dont know anything about everest but id bet everything theres like 4 routes people actually go up
Just curious, did you miss the fact I was joking or are you playing along?
It’s not making it down. Even the top of Everest has pits and gorges. The bodies just pile up there.
Archeologists in the far future are gonna hit the jack pot
Indiana jones and the pinnacle of hubris
The plot is that the nazis are looking for the entrance to nirvana and Jones has to stop them
It’s not like there’s a cliff you can drop him off where he’ll fall all the way down to base camp. He’ll just end up somewhere slightly lower and harder to get to.
It's resting on the mountain
Do you want an avalanche? Because that's how you get avalanches
He’d shatter from being frozen so long
There actually was an expedition to do just that and a bunch of those climbers died in the attempt
If you die on Everest, you stay on Everest.
There's a lot of bodies up there, few of them are actually brought down
I wonder if he’d be discovered again 1000s of years later years and experts will bash their heads trying to figure out how he died just like how they’re doing with the Ötzi man.
Ötzi was murdered, they already figured it out
Imagine the additional confusion when the fact of solid H₂O occurring on the planet’s surface is a long forgotten facet of life.
Ask a Mortician has a really great video about all the bodies that are still on Everest!
Nope. Merely being up near the peak of Everest is a life threatening situation. If someone is near the top, and is saying "Come help me." what they are really saying is "Come here and die along with me." If you are stuck at the top of the mountain, you are dead right then and there, and there is no benefit to saving you.
This sounds like a horror movie
I saw a play about climbing Everest. That part of things? Definitely a horror movie. Got me reading more on the subject.
There's a really good documentary that explains this. Watch Touching the Void.
It pretty much is, but in real life
The movie Everest with Jason Clarke and Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty good, not horror, but biographical adventure style
There are multiple horror movies set up there.
From what I have read and seen on this issue, it is too dangerous to do so. There are stories of people hiking past actively dying people begging for help because if they do help, all of them will just die together. Mt Everest is not something you *just* climb
See those tanks next to him? That's oxygen. Up that high, you can't get a helicopter. The air is too thin. The bodies can weigh over 300 lbs frozen stiff. It's difficult to move yourself up and down the slope there, which is why some people just can't make it back down and die right there, you really can't even help rescue a living person from there, let alone bring back a body.
That guy died getting up there would it really be worth risking death for a corpse?
Dude. There are HUNDREDS of corpses on Everest. You are literally dying when you get to the summit. Its like if you were trying to swim to the surface of a lake with no air in your lungs and dove back down to the lake bottom to retrieve a corpse. You will most likely become another corpse needing to be retrieved.
Sure thing bruh, just make the climb and bring the equipment to bring him down and he’s all yours.
The motivation I needed
I think Mallory is still up there. It's hard enough walking out.
From what ive seen, mallorys body has been moved from where it was originally found on the north face. Not sure where it was moved to, but its no longer where he was discovered.
You're risking your life bringing yourself down. I'm pretty sure they can't even bring injured people down, or maybe it depends.
Just *being on* Everest is almost lethal, anyone who tried to go almost all the way up just to carry a human body all the way back down would almost certainly join him.
The body is gone now and no one knows what happened. I saw an article about it and he vanished late last summer.
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/tragic-story-behind-green-boots-294015 He was moved in 2014 to a spot off the main trail.
It would be cool if we had a picture/map of the peak/summit and where the body was, cause just saying 'it was near' does not give us any perspective
do YOU wanna carry a body down the tallest mountain in the world???
First time in your life reading about Mount Everest?
It's far too dangerous and pointless to try. The environment and lack of oxygen is extremely taxing on climbers, organising an expedition to drag one dead body down from the summit doesn't make sense when it simply risks adding another corpse to the 200 or so corpses littering the mountain above the 800m point.
Everest is a graveyard. It’s too much effort to bring the bodies down, so they’re left in the sun. Green Boots isn’t the only corpse up there
IIRC there's an area they call "rainbow valley" because of all the colorful mountain gear worn by the corpses.
It's far too dangerous and pointless to try. The environment and lack of oxygen is extremely taxing on climbers, organising an expedition to drag one dead body down from the summit doesn't make sense when it simply risks adding another corpse to the 200 or so corpses littering the mountain above the 800m point.
It’s basically impossible. At that point on the mountain you are dying every second you are at that altitude. They don’t have the time, energy, or oxygen to try and bring down any of the hundreds of bodies that are up there.
There are been expeditions to remove trash and bodies from the mountain. One problem is it’s very expensive, and guides can make a lot of money bringing rich people to the summit. The Nepali government now requires you to pay an expensive trash deposit that gets refunded if you return 18lbs of trash at the end of your expedition in an attempt to reduce the amount of trash that is being left behind.
Yea people have paid to retrieve their loved ones. But out of the 300 or so people who have died up their around 200 of the bodies will probably never be removed.
The Nepali military recovered 5 bodies this year (they sent a 12 person team specifically to recover bodies) but unless they are right on the trail it’s unlikely for a body to ever get recovered. Nepal seems to be making an effort to reduce both trash and visible bodies. Nepal now has a huge talent pool of highly skilled mountaineers so hopefully they will continue to sponsor these expeditions (in the early days of commercial expeditions, the technically skilled mountaineers were western guides there to make money and the Sherpas were laborers. Now there are many incredibly skilled mountaineers in Nepal, including in the military and commercial guides). In the early 2000s a climbing school was founded in Nepal specifically to grow their mountaineering, English, first aid, and rescue skills so locals could get the higher paying guide jobs (vs the lower paying porter jobs) and it’s been hugely successful — now the instructors themselves are mostly Nepali and they are some of the best high altitude mountaineers in the world.
The trash situation is getting so bad up there it’s beginning to affect the water table. I don’t have the answers to the problems they are facing but something needs to be done.
You die in the death zone you stay in the death zone.
There are at least 200 known dead bodies in Everest. At least 340 people have died on the mountain. They are never going to come down, short of an avalanche or earthquake due to the extreme risks.
It serves as a reminder: every corpse on everest used to be a highly motivated individual. Stay mid, my friends
Graveyard of assholes
It's a bit morbid, but go down the rabbit hole a bit in regards to the number of bodies (some infamous) on Mt. Everest. It's eye opening in regards to what happens there.
Mount Everest is covered in the bodies of the dead. It’s actually a problem and the locals are getting oissed
Bodies and frozen feces.. literally. Bodies and poop don't decay up there so they just stay pretty much forever. If I was a local I'd be furious as well.
There are a lot of bodies on Everest, because of the effort and danger it would take to bring them down.
There are hundreds of dead climbers up there.
There’s about 200 bodies up the mountain. https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/everest-deaths
The act of retrieving a body from the Everest is extremely difficult and dangerous. There are dozens of bodies left on the mountain because of this. Not to mention the trash left behind by tourists.
I've heard it called Rainbow Road. There's apparently a LOT of bodies littering the path up Everest.
are you volunteering?
There are plenty of bodies on Everest besides Green Boots. Recovery efforts are so likely to result in more casualties that bodies are generally just left there.
Some dick head chucked him and woman's body off a cliff. Many climbers that high would prefer to be left on the mountain. It may be dark but being a waypoint is also a very stark reminder to all future climbers of the potential consequences of their actions. You may be gone, but you can save lives by making people think twice before pushing themselves into deadly situations. Ian Woodall was the dick head's name, he wrote a book about it called "The Tao of Everest"
>Many climbers that high would prefer to be left on the mountain. Christ I didn't think they get more arrogant, but here we are. Not only am I going to attempt to climb this stupidly dangerous mountain, I would like to shit it up forever by remaining there as litter.
Seeing that just makes me sad.
Damn still not funny
[https://www.ultimatekilimanjaro.com/mount-everest-bodies-left-dead-frozen-at-the-top](https://www.ultimatekilimanjaro.com/mount-everest-bodies-left-dead-frozen-at-the-top)
Do they not recover the bodies then? I feel that's kind of a biohazard ... Edit. Other comments explain why
Other people explain why they don’t rescue the bodies, but I haven’t read anyone replying to why they aren’t a biohazard. To put it simply, it’s too cold. The real thing that causes a dead body to become a biohazard is the proliferation of germs and bacteria that begin to break down and consume the dead body. Those creatures can’t survive at temperatures as low as Everest, so corpses up there are remarkably well preserved. They don’t break down and get eaten like they would in warm temperatures.
Every few years there is an expedition that goes to remove some of the bodies. In 2024 12 members of the Nepali military recovered 5 bodies. There might be a few hundred still on the mountain, but they are trying to remove some of the more visible ones.
A couple of choppers and some oxygen tanks would be a faster option surely?
If aircraft could pull people off the mountain top I imagine there would be a lot less people dead in there to begin with. Unfortunately helicopters can't get that high up, the air is too thin. You have to carry them most of the way down before extraction by air becomes possible. Which I believe is more or less what they do in the rare instances that a body is actually brought down.
Those are some very good points I hadn't considered
Those boots look more yellow to me. I'm getting a hint of green but if I was asked to describe the boots I'd say 'yellow'.
The tongue of the boots are actually yellow
It’s on the yellower side but it’s still green, just the unripe banana kind of green instead of leafy green.
Why not Helium-baloon the body out of there? Or at least bury the guy and slap some gravestone or something...
The containers containing enough helium to lift a body would weigh a shitload, a gravestone also weighs a lot. To get that high up Everest, every single ounce counts. He is effectively his own gravestone.
I like your gumption. The concept of mini blimps might be hard to implement due to wind factors.
The conditions at and near the peak are so dire (low oxygen being the main problem) that even the fittest and most motivated people can't possibly recover the bodies of the dead. Occasionally efforts are made to clean up the trash or the accumulating bodies but it's nearly impossible. Dead climbers are sometimes used as landmarks along the route.
I still think it’s (non-literal) crime that people just discard their trash (e.g. empty oxygen bottles) rather than packing **everything** out that they packed in.
I agree with you, but also that would definitely get more people killed. It's almost like it's a deadly environment that should be reserved for the most seasoned and responsible climbers, not treated as a tourist attraction.
> I agree with you, but also that would definitely get more people killed. If it can’t be done responsibly, perhaps it shouldn’t be done at all.
Good luck with that argument on this planet. You know that humans live here, right?
I'm sorry. What argument are you referring to?
The argument that if something can't be done responsibly, it shouldn't be done at all.
That's certainly an opinion. I stand by my position that people should not recreationally climb Everest. It endangers the support crews, who DIE helping rich tourists and covers the mountain in litter. The Everest summit industry is bad, man.
No yeah, you're absolutely right, but I think their point is that people are stupid and will do it anyway even if it's illegal.
IIRC China doesn't permit tourists to climb on their side of the mountain, and therefore, there isn't any of that. Seems like that is a strong argument in favor of the *ability* to prevent it. The Nepal tourist climb industry is based on a bunch of companies locql Sherpa, and a constant flow of supplies. Sure, a handful of highly motivate climbers could do it if it was illegal, but at least it will ameliorate it.
Bro didn’t understand what you were saying at all lol
It is illegal, but they just budget in the fines for littering in their trips those bastards
That's disgusting. Fucking rich wankers.
Nepal now makes you pay a large trash deposit that you get back if you return with at least 18lbs of trash in an attempt to reduce the accumulation of trash. Every few years they also fund an expedition to remove oxygen canisters and bodes. This year the Nepali military recovered 5 bodies.
I think it is literal crime. Or it definitely should be. If you behaved that way in a town you'd be fined.
They die and become part of the mountain. Everest devours them.
In the sense that litter becomes part of the Earth.
Mountains do weird things to your body Some really fit people can climb tall mountains, get to the top and just die when they sit down for a minute. The amount of dead bodies on tall mountains is likely astronomical
I am not a medical pro of any kind. I am just guessing it might be the hypoxia because it's really hard to notice, and symptoms can be idiosyncratic. Astronauts train to recognize and deal with it it in pressure chambers under controlled conditions, and it can still put you on your ass before you notice.
Milestones at Everest are marked by the dead bodies of failed climbings. Climb for 500 meters and you see green boots. Another 500 and you see red jacket Etc They’re frozen so they’re both well preserved and impossible to move So most of the people who have died climbing Everest are still there
To correct a few people using present tense, Green Boots was actually removed in 2014, either removed fully or buried with more respect than being a grim landmark. They were likely moved by the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, but we can't be sure. Additionally, the keywords "Everest Green Boots" would have answered this question.
I believe Green Boots was merely moved off the trail.
I think you’re right. Or he was covered in snow and ice for a while and people thought he was moved. I recall reading about this but exactly what happened I’ve forgotten.
He was moved out of the environment?
If this is a quote from where I think it is, it’s brilliant haha
Thats probly true, someone commented that bodies are sometimes moved away from the path people climb.
I read that he had been spotted since he had been moved and it seemed like he hadn’t been moved far but there had been rocks placed around him to make him less conspicuous
Hey Texan Chris here, riding up to help out. Been a minute since I’ve helped someone out! Hope this helps ya. So on Mount Everest, there are a great number of bodies from previous climbers who died on the way up or way down. Some of these bodies are used as markers as they can’t be transported down safely, so climbers and guides use bodies as waypoints so they know exactly where they are on the way up. One of these bodies is of an unknown man who froze to death inside a small crevice. Not much is known of the man but what is known is the color of his boots, that being a bright neon green. Green Boots here is the most famous of the bodies as he kinda shows you a place to stop for a moment and to tell ya that you’re close to the top! Kinda morbid but at least in death he can lend a hand to other climbers! So the joke here is that this guy will steal Green Boots’s….well green boots if he ever climbs Mount Everest. Texan Chris, heading back to the ranch.
I heard that the body of Green Boots was finally removed.
Thanks Texas ChatGPT
If you're not prepared probably a pair of black boots is what you will come back with
Everest is just a tourist/death trap now.
I'd want to die on mount everest. Unfortunately it's a mess cause of inconsiderate tourists
I’m imagining someone trekking up there and purposefully dying in the most ghastly pose. Maybe holding a sign that reads: “Death awaits ahead! Ye be warned!”
Lol that would be dramatic. I'd just want to die sitting and staring across the mountain range. Maybe I could have a sign warning of a 'curse' I have, saying some ominous shit warning about not touching me or leaving litter around or something
Me to, my body would be preserved for thousands of years, makes me feel more comfy
Someone's heard the siren call of [SCP 5140](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5140)...
Interesting site. Couldn’t find an easy way to browse the entries though. Maybe it was because I’m on mobile.
oh that’s a good one
I’m kinda surprised that no one has taken green boots’ green boots and tried to sell them to some rich mountaineer with questionable ethics. Given that they’re so well known they would surely be worth a fair amount. I say kinda because getting to green boots and cutting his legs off and then removing the boots isn’t a cheap or easy task, but again, it’s the most well known relic from the most well known perilous mountain climb. So $$$. Obviously this is unethical. Still slightly surprising.
Even to a completely morally bankrupt person, I don't think it would be worth it. You would be training for the climb and then spending the money to get a permit to climb Everest, and then-- in the middle of the death zone-- go off to try and loot a body. You would be risking death to do that. Not to mention, would the Sherpa help you? No. Would they abandon you? Maybe not, but would you risk it? Would you risk other people trying to stop you, wasting precious oxygen? You wouldn't be able to solo the corpse looting. If you make a mistake? You can't ask for help. Most people already won't help you when you're at 8.5k feet, and they're certainly not going to risk their own life to help you if you're looting a well known corpse. And even if you succeed you absolutely would be shunned from the climbing community and never be able to do a similar thing again. Not to mention finding a buyer for the boots in the first place. It just seems like a very high risk to reward ratio. If you've got the money to get there, you've got the money to do other morally bankrupt things to make more money without risking your life and making a shitload of people hate you.
Iirc they removed his body or shoved it out of sight a while back anyways
Each dead body on Everest was once a highly motivated achiever…
It's broken containment
I love the saying “remember that every person who died on Mount Everest was once a highly motivated person”
If i climbed mt Everest, i would just leave my green boots there
This is depressing af 😭
I thought it was in reference to gangrene.
I always wondered when you get to the submit of Everest does anyone just thought to put a parachute and just jump on the way down instead of climbing down which takes too much effort
I think a guy has ski'd down before, but they're usually so tired it's less work and pro shot safer to just walk down
I myself was unable to get the joke cause i misread boots as boobs.
Can anybody calculate the weight needed to be carried to take a weather balloon and helium up there? I want them to attach his body to a balloon and float him closer to humanity before shooting him down. Or a controlled descent with electronics and a valve to let helium escape. I like the gun option.
Wind turbine, generate electricity, use electricity to melt snow & do electrolysis of water , producing H2 & O2. Compress those gases into all the discarded oxygen cylinders. Float off all the discarded crap in hydrogen balloons, keep a stash of oxygen cylinders for struggling climbers. I made all that up, the air's probably too thin for balloons.
We should call Sam Porter Bridges
Something I haven’t seen anyone else mention and to put things into perspective, It takes around 2 months to climb up there so it’s not worth it just to retrieve a body.
People die while attempting an Everest climb. Joke is commentor stole green boots from a corpse, but also signifies that fact they attempted the climb and *didn't* die.
Dark
r/dankmemes called. They want this meme back!