Everest Update. Far, far worse than previously reported.

In a previous post,
http://blacknewblack.blogspot.com/2006/06/please-stop-climbing-mount-Everest-now.html
I bitched about how climbing Mount Everest has become a dangerous, stupid "must-do" for rich, eccentric idiots. I reported that fifteen hundred people had completed the climb, and just under two hundred have died trying. Well, we've passed the two hundred mark, with a grand, horrible total of two hundred and three dead, and I have found out that the total number of morons who have completed the climb has passed two thousand seven hundred. Apparently, the average modern attempt costs around sixty thousand dollars, and the climbers are so focused on completing their investment, I mean attempt, that they have lost a great deal of their humanity. And not just a few of them. In March, one climber lay dying, after completing his summit, on his way back down, 984 feet from the top. Fourty climbers passed him by, too eager to complete their climb to bother to share their oxygen with him. Yep, they let him die. I'm sure they have their justifications and excuses, but I don't care. I just don't care. There is nothing unique, or impressive about doing it any more. If you do, you're an idiot and an a**hole. In the words of Sir Edmund Hillary: "On my expedition, there was no way you'd have left a man under a rock to die." Evidently, when you climb Everest, you leave $60,000 and your humanity behind.

More details, as referenced in the first post: http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3869295
The total of summiters and deaths is low in this article.