Helicopter lands on summit of Everest

Perhaps they were filming the wedding

I hear McDonalds has got the first franchise to open a branch up at the top of Everest, to cater for all these folk dropping in there.

DS

That's awsome, David! Do you have a link for that?

Jim,
The two links in my original post should work. They work for me anyway...

/dl

Strange how the technical ability to do something is always used even when it destroys the stuff of dreams for many.

Inaccessibilty is a rare gift to humankind in a world of cheap air travel and the ready ability to afford the ticket no matter what the real cost.

Putting a railway on Snowdon made it the most boring summit in the British Isles. Unless you get some evil pleasure from sneering at girls in stilletto heels, miniskirts and blouses freezing their wotsits off on the rain-soaked, windswept summit while they wait to go back down on the train.

Having struggled to make the journey to the summit on foot. To the highest point in England and Wales. One's feelings of elation and achievement are quickly punctured by the sight of brainless grockles wandering around in their gaudy shell-suits looking for their next fix of Coke, having a fag and quickly stuffing a couple of hotdogs down to keep them going just until the train leaves again.

Sometimes the ability to do something, while technically feasible, is so worthless as to demean the achievements of those who did it the "right way". In human terms it's simply "cheating".

A bit like saying you did all the big Tour de France climbs faster on your motorbike than that skinny guy in the Yellow Jersey.

Whatever. <Yawn>

Nime

I dunno Nime, I'm interested in it as I'm interested in all things aviation. For all their utility helicopters are balanced on a knife edge compared to fixed wing aircraft and when they stretch their envelope a little I'm interested.

Anyway, the summit of Everest doesn't just belong just to the small group of insane masochists that want to get to the top the hard way (and spend, what - 50,000 USD on a permit? and tens of thousands on equipment, logistics blah blah...)

Helicopters are incredibly unstable bits of kit to fly - sensitive to the merest breeze, and that's in what I would consider to be "normal" conditions we are used to in the UK. So landing a helicopter atop the highest mountain in the world strikes me as an extraordinary achievement - the wind conditions they must have had to cope with up there must have been of a scale I can barely imagine.

Damned technobabble!

Everest is not a just a playground for "insane masochists".

It is the last unspoilt peak of solitary perfection in a tawdry, hyped-up world of shell-suited voyeuristic spectatorship by the whining multi-plebs over and above active participation by those who aim higher. To have watched is now considered a far greater achievement than to have actually done something real.

Let them play with their bløødy toys elsewhere!

In other words, Nime - you just wish it woz u wot dunnit?!

quote:

Everest is not a just a playground for "insane masochists".

That's exactly what it is!

quote:

Originally posted by Nime:

It is the last unspoilt peak of solitary perfection

What! You have got to be kidding! Unspoilt apart from hundreds (thousands?) of empty oxygen canisters? Not to mention multiple frozen corpses of insane masochists that didn't make it?

(BTW, the "masochist" thing comes from Judy Ledden in the doco where she is lugging a hang-glider up Kilimanjaro and remarks that mountain climbing always seemed to her like the definition of masochism - like hitting your head against a brick wall because it feels so good when you stop.)

Er... what about the marvels of computer graphics???

Personally I think it's a hoax ?


Fritz Von Everest is covered with thousands of tons of visitors garbage anyway, innit

Everest may be all the things you say it is. But it's also an important place in the human psyche. Or was once. I was referring to the higher slopes where mere mortals fall like chaff before the wind. No use taking a bus or paying for cheap holiday flights up there. KIt takes more than a solarium tan and a good dose of holiday tummy to survive up there!

You really are a complete bunch of philistines! Where is your soul, your imagination and your sense of awe? Surely there is more to humanity than MacDonalds, Sky TV and football chants? No wonder there are no great composers around these days. Mankind has lost its sense of adventure and romance thanks to endless TV repeats. Not so much life in the fast lane as life in the intellectual gutter.

Are we truly doomed for evermore to a secondhand existence in front of a screen? Geoff even wants us to watch digital cartoons! Even secondhand reality is no longer good enough it seems. It has to be virtual now, to be believable.

Our trivial communications are by SMS message and email where all the long centuries of building skills at lively conversation and polite argument are about as immediate as leaving time-capsules to each other.

Well I blame Fritz for all this!!!!

Nime

quote:

Are we truly doomed for evermore to a secondhand existence in front of a screen?

A screen? Not me. I for one am looking forward to spending my dotage experiencing all these things via a home pc and an RS232 interface lead, plugged directly into my ceribellum. Going to be better than just looking out of the window like my granny does

Regards

Andy

Though of course in reality one swims down to the summit of the worlds biggest mountain, which I believe is far taller than Everest, innit, or so this Irish geezer I met last night told me ?

Fritz Von Troughs & Peaks

I nominate Nime for the "Last of the Romantics" awards.

quote:

Originally posted by Deane F:
I nominate Nime for the "Last of the Romantics" awards.

Seconded, but I still don't believe it actually landed on the summit

I am humbled! Thankyou! Thankyou Loveys!

I'd just like to thank my ...

Hi David

Checked out those two links but nothing about McDonalds. Is the company involved in the flights sponsered by them?

Jim