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Sad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool. Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - prett

Sad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool. Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling). Edit: 3% is for climbers above base camp - for summit climbers its close to 10%! According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster

pradocchia 15y ago
But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool. Not to mention two sons, two and three years old respectively. There is a season of life for climbing mountains. This was not it.
- JabavuAdams 15y ago
  Well, maybe he had kids before he got to climb Everest. Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing? There's really never a good time to climb Everest. It might be much better for the kids to have a dead father than a bitter, reluctant father.
  - gwright 15y ago
    > Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing? I don't know about giving up on dreams in the abstract, but yes, having kids should change the priorities in your life and that will most likely mean giving up some of your own wants, big and small, in order to care of your kids. If you aren't comfortable with that change, then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids.
    - mst 15y ago
      He believed in this. His wife presumably knew he did. I salute them. Now could we please get the hell out of their personal decisions? Seriously. I'm not comfortable with HN acting as if they're entitled to judge his and her choices. I doubt any of us would want our community to judge ours.
    - JabavuAdams 15y ago
      > then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids Contributing genetic information and some parenting can be a net positive even if the parent is ultimately absent (for whatever reasons). Take the extreme case of a parent who disappears just after the child's birth. The other parent may still be thankful to have the child, and the child may still be a credit to society. Is the disappearing parent a good parent? Not really. Should he/she have never had the child, as you suggest? Well, that's up to the child, really. I.e. it's hard to fault your parents for making you, whether they're good parents or not. Do you have kids? It's relevant because I used to make arguments like yours until I had a child and realized how much more nuanced these arguments actually are.
  - pandeiro 15y ago
    I upvoted you for the 'never a good time...' line lolz, but your last statement is truly absurd. I assume you don't have kids. Nothing replaces a parent, even a flawed one.
    - JabavuAdams 15y ago
      > Nothing replaces a parent, even a flawed one. That's easily refuted -- it depends on how flawed. Talk to some kids who have been abused, abandoned or had debilitatingly mentally ill parents. Compare with kids whose parents divorced or who lost a parent to disease.
- meatmanek 15y ago
  Climbing Everest is not cheap -- on the order of $50k. It's possible he couldn't afford it during that "season of life".
poundy 15y ago
> Sad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool. I believe this is exactly why he is the CEO of a popular company and others like me are not. He takes risks most of us avoid for various reasons!
- kenjackson 15y ago
  I believe they're not strongly correlated. I know a lot of people that take risks that most of us avoid. Most of these people share very few characteristics of your typical CEO. Half of them end up on YouTube with clips that begin with, "Check this out...".
- hernan7 15y ago
  He was the CEO of a popular company.
- rmobin 15y ago
  It's a big difference to risk starting a company vs climbing Mt Everest. That's actually a big mental block people have - they are afraid of risk, but starting a company or asking a cute girl out and failing is more of an ego hit than a threat to your existence.
peterbraden 15y ago
It was his lifelong ambition. Whether it was selfish or not is between him and his wife - let's not pass judgement on the dead.
- samtp 15y ago
  If you can pass judgement on the living then you can do the same to someone who has died. While putting the dead on a pedestal may comfort our own feelings about death, it doesn't escape the reality of their actions.
  - yelsgib 15y ago
    You shouldn't pass judgement on the living.
- jedc 15y ago
  His family clearly supported him (based on a few other news outlets that actually interviewed them).
  - wtn 15y ago
    His family was enabling his narcissism.
    - jedc 15y ago
      Having actually known John in real life, I disagree with your description of him as a narcissist.
      - samtp 15y ago
        Someone doesn't have to be a complete narcissist to occasionally behave in a narcissistic manner. Hell, we all act narcissistically from time to time (some would even say all the time).
    - CamperBob 15y ago
      His family made a lot of money on that same narcissism, and derived a lot of security from it. Conversely, someone who can be talked out of climbing a mountain can also be talked into keeping his day job, and probably will be.
kloncks 15y ago
I don't understand all this harsh judgement, especially from the HN crowd. Who are you to say what he should or shouldn't do? He essentially died from a freak accident that couldn't be predicted ahead of time. Telling him that he shouldn't do something because he's married with children is like someone telling you you shouldn't pursue a dream (whether that be climbing a mountain or trying an innovative startup with a high chance of failure) just because you happen to be married. You don't know his situation. I don't know his situation. Can't we just stop this judging and simply feel bad about an unfortunate death?
- AJ007 15y ago
  1 in 10 chance isn't a freak accident, its called being reckless and I don't see anything to feel bad about.
  - there 15y ago
    i wonder if, assuming he had one, his life insurance policy will pay out or if this will be considered a reckless action on his part.
    - dstein 15y ago
      I think most insurance policies cover someone while in their own country. Outside of his country would be travelers insurance.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Startups typically don't kill you, and leave your family without a primary provider.
- samtp 15y ago
  I think the criticism on here is not too harsh and could have been predicted by people who knew he was doing this. Many people see the father as the protector of the household. Sure, this view plays into traditional gender roles, but to deny it would be to ignore the reality of how many people think. By going off and risking his life on a personal accomplishment, he wasn't doing the best job to protect his family. There are an unlimited number of other ways that he could have challenged himself physically and mentally without the risk to the people close to him. This isn't a criticism of John as a person, but a decision that he made. I don't know who he was and I'm sure that he was a great man. But he put his family at risk to pursue a challenge that is mostly a boost to his own ego.
pitdesi 15y ago
FYI - the overall rate is ~9% but has been declining significantly in recent years... http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKillerMountainsAnExplorersWebSeriesOct292003.shtml http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKillerMountain... "To date, there have been 1,924 ascents of Mount Everest (more than 1,300 different climbers), and 179 people have died. The overall fatality rate is thus about 9% (fatality rate is defined as successful summits compared to fatalities). However, since 1990 there has been an explosion of summiteers and fatality statistics have changed. Up to 1990, the Everest fatality rate is a whopping 37%, with 106 deaths and only 284 summits. Yet from 1990 until today, the rate has dropped to 4.4%; 73 people have died, and 1,640 have summited. Thus, the rate decreased to about eight times less than the pre-1990 fatality rate!"
- hugh3 15y ago
  Interesting. Though I imagine that a lot of people who die climbing Everest die because they did something stupid. What's the death rate for people who are sensible? (This guy doesn't seem to have done anything stupid, his brain just didn't like the altitude). I wouldn't do it. But I do want to climb Mt Kilimanjaro sometime (much less dangerous).
  - scott_s 15y ago
    What's the death rate for people who are sensible? Sensible how? Like not climbing Everest? Be careful how you define it, because there's the danger of saying that everyone who lived was sensible. Anyway, that's kinda like saying that drunk driving is only dangerous if you're not sensible when you're doing it. We can't survive that long that high, and our judgement becomes seriously impaired, similar to being drunk.
  - bhickey 15y ago
    Dying on Everest isn't a matter of sensibility. Most people who die are stricken with altitude sickness[1]. HACE and HAPE move fast, and the only effective treatment is reduction in altitude. Hyperbaric chambers can buy time, diamox isn't shown to be effective for HACE and HAPE. Acute mountain sickness (AMS) can strike even lower. A friend of mine was in Nepal with the Discovery Channel this past Fall. One of the producers was evacuated due to AMS when they were under 6000m. Altitude is a lottery. For my part, there's plenty of climbing near sea level that kicks my butt. [1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Leading-Causes-of-Death-In-the-Everest-Mountains-33802.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/Leading-Causes-of-Death-In-th...
TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling). I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but that is a horrible pun.
mmaunder 15y ago
Same situation with Rob Hall in 1996 (a very bad and very famous season on Everest) and his 7 month pregnant wife Jan Arnold. She was also a climber and physician who had submitted Everest with Hall in the past. He called her via sat phone from the summit to say goodbye.
- ckcheng 15y ago
  As I recall, Rob Hall was a mountain guide leading a team. He died, doing his job, staying with a team member who was in trouble to try to help.
sdoowpilihp 15y ago
Of that 10% of deaths, According to Chris Warner (a well known mountaineer) 4 out of 5 of them are due to human error.
yelsgib 15y ago
This comment makes me extremely angry. Do you know anything about this man or his family? Do you know anything about the reasons that he was climbing the mountain? Disrespectful in the extreme.

pradocchia 15y ago

But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool. Not to mention two sons, two and three years old respectively. There is a season of life for climbing mountains. This was not it.

JabavuAdams 15y ago
Well, maybe he had kids before he got to climb Everest. Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing? There's really never a good time to climb Everest. It might be much better for the kids to have a dead father than a bitter, reluctant father.
- gwright 15y ago
  > Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing? I don't know about giving up on dreams in the abstract, but yes, having kids should change the priorities in your life and that will most likely mean giving up some of your own wants, big and small, in order to care of your kids. If you aren't comfortable with that change, then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids.
  - mst 15y ago
    He believed in this. His wife presumably knew he did. I salute them. Now could we please get the hell out of their personal decisions? Seriously. I'm not comfortable with HN acting as if they're entitled to judge his and her choices. I doubt any of us would want our community to judge ours.
  - JabavuAdams 15y ago
    > then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids Contributing genetic information and some parenting can be a net positive even if the parent is ultimately absent (for whatever reasons). Take the extreme case of a parent who disappears just after the child's birth. The other parent may still be thankful to have the child, and the child may still be a credit to society. Is the disappearing parent a good parent? Not really. Should he/she have never had the child, as you suggest? Well, that's up to the child, really. I.e. it's hard to fault your parents for making you, whether they're good parents or not. Do you have kids? It's relevant because I used to make arguments like yours until I had a child and realized how much more nuanced these arguments actually are.
- pandeiro 15y ago
  I upvoted you for the 'never a good time...' line lolz, but your last statement is truly absurd. I assume you don't have kids. Nothing replaces a parent, even a flawed one.
  - JabavuAdams 15y ago
    > Nothing replaces a parent, even a flawed one. That's easily refuted -- it depends on how flawed. Talk to some kids who have been abused, abandoned or had debilitatingly mentally ill parents. Compare with kids whose parents divorced or who lost a parent to disease.
meatmanek 15y ago
Climbing Everest is not cheap -- on the order of $50k. It's possible he couldn't afford it during that "season of life".

poundy 15y ago

> Sad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool. I believe this is exactly why he is the CEO of a popular company and others like me are not. He takes risks most of us avoid for various reasons!

kenjackson 15y ago
I believe they're not strongly correlated. I know a lot of people that take risks that most of us avoid. Most of these people share very few characteristics of your typical CEO. Half of them end up on YouTube with clips that begin with, "Check this out...".
hernan7 15y ago
He was the CEO of a popular company.
rmobin 15y ago
It's a big difference to risk starting a company vs climbing Mt Everest. That's actually a big mental block people have - they are afraid of risk, but starting a company or asking a cute girl out and failing is more of an ego hit than a threat to your existence.

peterbraden 15y ago

It was his lifelong ambition. Whether it was selfish or not is between him and his wife - let's not pass judgement on the dead.

samtp 15y ago
If you can pass judgement on the living then you can do the same to someone who has died. While putting the dead on a pedestal may comfort our own feelings about death, it doesn't escape the reality of their actions.
- yelsgib 15y ago
  You shouldn't pass judgement on the living.
jedc 15y ago
His family clearly supported him (based on a few other news outlets that actually interviewed them).
- wtn 15y ago
  His family was enabling his narcissism.
  - jedc 15y ago
    Having actually known John in real life, I disagree with your description of him as a narcissist.
    - samtp 15y ago
      Someone doesn't have to be a complete narcissist to occasionally behave in a narcissistic manner. Hell, we all act narcissistically from time to time (some would even say all the time).
  - CamperBob 15y ago
    His family made a lot of money on that same narcissism, and derived a lot of security from it. Conversely, someone who can be talked out of climbing a mountain can also be talked into keeping his day job, and probably will be.

kloncks 15y ago

I don't understand all this harsh judgement, especially from the HN crowd. Who are you to say what he should or shouldn't do? He essentially died from a freak accident that couldn't be predicted ahead of time. Telling him that he shouldn't do something because he's married with children is like someone telling you you shouldn't pursue a dream (whether that be climbing a mountain or trying an innovative startup with a high chance of failure) just because you happen to be married. You don't know his situation. I don't know his situation. Can't we just stop this judging and simply feel bad about an unfortunate death?

AJ007 15y ago
1 in 10 chance isn't a freak accident, its called being reckless and I don't see anything to feel bad about.
- there 15y ago
  i wonder if, assuming he had one, his life insurance policy will pay out or if this will be considered a reckless action on his part.
  - dstein 15y ago
    I think most insurance policies cover someone while in their own country. Outside of his country would be travelers insurance.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
Startups typically don't kill you, and leave your family without a primary provider.
samtp 15y ago
I think the criticism on here is not too harsh and could have been predicted by people who knew he was doing this. Many people see the father as the protector of the household. Sure, this view plays into traditional gender roles, but to deny it would be to ignore the reality of how many people think. By going off and risking his life on a personal accomplishment, he wasn't doing the best job to protect his family. There are an unlimited number of other ways that he could have challenged himself physically and mentally without the risk to the people close to him. This isn't a criticism of John as a person, but a decision that he made. I don't know who he was and I'm sure that he was a great man. But he put his family at risk to pursue a challenge that is mostly a boost to his own ego.

pitdesi 15y ago

FYI - the overall rate is ~9% but has been declining significantly in recent years... http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKillerMountainsAnExplorersWebSeriesOct292003.shtml http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKillerMountain... "To date, there have been 1,924 ascents of Mount Everest (more than 1,300 different climbers), and 179 people have died. The overall fatality rate is thus about 9% (fatality rate is defined as successful summits compared to fatalities). However, since 1990 there has been an explosion of summiteers and fatality statistics have changed. Up to 1990, the Everest fatality rate is a whopping 37%, with 106 deaths and only 284 summits. Yet from 1990 until today, the rate has dropped to 4.4%; 73 people have died, and 1,640 have summited. Thus, the rate decreased to about eight times less than the pre-1990 fatality rate!"

hugh3 15y ago
Interesting. Though I imagine that a lot of people who die climbing Everest die because they did something stupid. What's the death rate for people who are sensible? (This guy doesn't seem to have done anything stupid, his brain just didn't like the altitude). I wouldn't do it. But I do want to climb Mt Kilimanjaro sometime (much less dangerous).
- scott_s 15y ago
  What's the death rate for people who are sensible? Sensible how? Like not climbing Everest? Be careful how you define it, because there's the danger of saying that everyone who lived was sensible. Anyway, that's kinda like saying that drunk driving is only dangerous if you're not sensible when you're doing it. We can't survive that long that high, and our judgement becomes seriously impaired, similar to being drunk.
- bhickey 15y ago
  Dying on Everest isn't a matter of sensibility. Most people who die are stricken with altitude sickness[1]. HACE and HAPE move fast, and the only effective treatment is reduction in altitude. Hyperbaric chambers can buy time, diamox isn't shown to be effective for HACE and HAPE. Acute mountain sickness (AMS) can strike even lower. A friend of mine was in Nepal with the Discovery Channel this past Fall. One of the producers was evacuated due to AMS when they were under 6000m. Altitude is a lottery. For my part, there's plenty of climbing near sea level that kicks my butt. [1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Leading-Causes-of-Death-In-the-Everest-Mountains-33802.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/Leading-Causes-of-Death-In-th...

TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago

Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling). I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but that is a horrible pun.

mmaunder 15y ago

Same situation with Rob Hall in 1996 (a very bad and very famous season on Everest) and his 7 month pregnant wife Jan Arnold. She was also a climber and physician who had submitted Everest with Hall in the past. He called her via sat phone from the summit to say goodbye.

ckcheng 15y ago
As I recall, Rob Hall was a mountain guide leading a team. He died, doing his job, staying with a team member who was in trouble to try to help.

sdoowpilihp 15y ago

Of that 10% of deaths, According to Chris Warner (a well known mountaineer) 4 out of 5 of them are due to human error.

yelsgib 15y ago

This comment makes me extremely angry. Do you know anything about this man or his family? Do you know anything about the reasons that he was climbing the mountain? Disrespectful in the extreme.