John’s Crawlspace

I don’t know a whole lot about Mount Everest. I knew that it was intense, and that most people that attempt to climb it tend to be on the slightly crazier end of the outdoor enthusiast spectrum.

A buddy of mine sent me this blog post about Everest this morning. Here are a few of the things that stood out to me:

There is a landmark on the ascent known among climbers as “Green Boots Cave”. It’s a small limestone overhand at 8500 m. It earned it’s nickname because a climber died there and can still be seen in the fetal position with his fluorescent green boots sticking out of the snow, as if he had died yesterday.

For every ten climbers who have ever reached the summit of Everest, one of them dies. Out of the 216 people that have been claimed by Everest, 150 of their bodies have never been recovered.

Mount Everest actually penetrates the troposphere, where Jet Streams regularly flow up to 200 mph. Everest is 1 of only 14 mountains worldwide (known as “eight-thousanders“) that reaches up into what is known as “the Death Zone” (beyond 8000 meters). In the Death Zone, climbers regularly experience odd physical and mental states, including unsettling hallucinations.

Even rescue operations are essentially suicidal in the Death Zone. One attempt by a Sherpa and a Nepalese policeman resulted in the falling death of both individuals.

“Rainbow Valley” is an area along the northeastern route of Everest’s summit. It earned it’s nickname due to the multicolored jackets of corpses that can be seen all along the hillside. Due to Everest’s sub zero conditions, these corpses remain intact for decades.

David Brashears, who has summited Everest five times, has said that “there had been nothing in my training to prepare me to pass through the open graveyard waiting above.”

Needless to say, Everest is much more intense than I had originally thought. I had always thought that when I’m older and have money to throw around, it might be something I’d like to try. After reading this article, I can honestly say that I’ve changed my mind. Crazy stuff.

I spent entirely too much time on AOL in high school… So this sound is all too familiar to me. I think it is permanently burned into my mind.

Out of all the links I encounter on a day-to-day basis, I’m not sure why this particular one prompted me to post it on my site, as opposed to just tweeting it or IMing it to a handful of people, which tends to be the easier route of sharing these days. Anyway, enjoy the flashback.

This is awesome, and reminds me of something I would have daydreamed about when I was younger. The Peregrine Falcon reaches speeds of nearly 200 mph… The fastest one was clocked at 242 mph. In this video, a mini video camera was attached to the back of the falcon (as well as a Goshawk) and the resulting footage is nothing short of awesome. Check it out here.

In other news… Between work and social life, I’ve had little time for this site, as you can see in the lack of regular posts. Life in SoCal is great. I’ve been seeing a ton of live music (seeing Furthur tonight and Bluetech on Thursday) and there’s something fun going on every single weekend (going to Vegas for a bachelor party this weekend). I still refuse to let this site die though, and will continue to post things here whenever I’m feeling inspired.

Did you know that Elvis Presley was made an honorary DEA agent by Richard Nixon? I had seen this photo before, but never knew the context in which it was taken.

The irony here is that he was (most likely) out of his mind on all kinds of painkillers when he met Nixon and was made a “Federal Agent at Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. When he died (at 42) on August 16, 1977 he had 14 drugs in his system, including Codeine, Morphine, Quaaludes, Valium, Demerol, and Diazepam.

This is most likely common knowledge to the majority of you, but I thought it was pretty interesting… They mentioned it on Howard Stern on my drive into work.

On a completely unrelated note, I laughed pretty damn hard at this video: My Voice Is Higher Than Your Voice. It may have had something to do with the fact that I had been at work for over 12 hours prior to viewing and was slightly delirious, but I still think it’s funny. That is all, carry on.

If I had access to a super expensive video camera that was capable of recording at 1000 frames per second, I’d like to think that I’d come up with some pretty creative stuff to film. Everything looks cool in slow motion. Some stuff sounds cool, too.

Some band called the Dancing Pigeons (and some dude named Tomas Mankovsky) shot a music video with a Phantom slow motion camera. They also had access to a fire extinguisher… And a flame thrower. Good work, guys.