8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

[madbuck]

How many people start with Capitol? No one - or certainly not enough to skew the stats. That's exactly my point.

People aren't getting up off the couch one day, driving 45mins and arriving at the base of Everest like, "yo, I got this!" Everything you listed is a prerequisite for climbing any 8000er.

Which is why I picked Longs as more reasonable.

I would suggest that the skill gap between guided Everest (or easier) climbers and those attempting more/many/most of the rest is appreciable.
Perhaps not "mall-walker" wide of a chasm...but noticeable!
But, any differences in that death rate is absolutely dwarfed by more dangerous peaks.

OK, I see your point better when you're saying most of the climbers are similarly experienced in comparison to those that aren't even in a position to try.
If you do consider the dominating effects of the most dangerous peaks, and the fact that they are really only attempted by similarly skilled climbers, then most of the effect of experience is "built in" to the known odds of the most difficult peaks. Given that they dominate, and there are 'only' 14 of them done in a reasonably progressive fashion, I can see why the approximation of independence is a reasonable approximation.

[ezabielski]

"I've done something like this 7 times before and I'm still alive so it must not be that dangerous." When in reality, the odds of doing it that 8th time have almost nothing to do with your first 7 attempts.

You're going to need to provide some evidence to show just how much or how little your chances improve after X peaks. With the given data in this thread, we simply to do not have enough data to say if someone has attempted X 8000m peaks, what is the chance that the chance that they will die on their X+1 attempt. But you need even more specific data than that to really answer it, since order matters. That is, if you attempted climbed 5 peaks, it matters which 5 those were and what the 6th one you're trying for is. You need to know, given someone who has climbed this X_1,X_2,...,X_n list of peaks, what is the chance they will die when they attempt to add X_n+1 peak onto their list. I think there is the data out there from Elizabeth Hawley to answer this question, but no one has done the analysis yet.

[AyeYo]

"I've done something like this 7 times before and I'm still alive so it must not be that dangerous." When in reality, the odds of doing it that 8th time have almost nothing to do with your first 7 attempts.

You're going to need to provide some evidence to show just how much or how little your chances improve after X peaks. With the given data in this thread, we simply to do not have enough data to say if someone has attempted X 8000m peaks, what is the chance that the chance that they will die on their X+1 attempt. But you need even more specific data than that to really answer it, since order matters. That is, if you attempted climbed 5 peaks, it matters which 5 those were and what the 6th one you're trying for is. You need to know, given someone who has climbed this X_1,X_2,...,X_n list of peaks, what is the chance they will die when they attempt to add X_n+1 peak onto their list. I think there is the data out there from Elizabeth Hawley to answer this question, but no one has done the analysis yet.

And this is utterly impossible, which is why his original statistic is an accurate, ballpark average for climbers appropriately experienced to be climbing 8000ers.

[AyeYo]

OK, I see your point better when you're saying most of the climbers are similarly experienced in comparison to those that aren't even in a position to try.
If you do consider the dominating effects of the most dangerous peaks, and the fact that they are really only attempted by similarly skilled climbers, then most of the effect of experience is "built in" to the known odds of the most difficult peaks. Given that they dominate, and there are 'only' 14 of them done in a reasonably progressive fashion, I can see why the approximation of independence is a reasonable approximation.

Yes, now you're picking up what I'm putting down. No one is saying they're 100% independent, but what little dependence they may have isn't all that relevant to a ballpark statistic - especially giving that most high-altitude mountaineering accidents are unavoidable events that come down to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[ezabielski]

And this is utterly impossible, which is why his original statistic is an accurate, ballpark average for climbers appropriately experienced to be climbing 8000ers.

It's absolutely possible using the data from this website: http://www.8000ers.com/cms/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Elizabeth Hawley has been tracking exactly the data we need to answer this question in a scientific way rather than the armchair mountaineering we have here.

What we are saying that the original post uses extremely flawed methods that it's not even in a ballpark. I even showed that 77% using the same (still flawed) methods is a better number since it draws from data that came from years that people have actually been trying to do all the 8000m peaks.

[mikefromcraig]

"I've done something like this 7 times before and I'm still alive so it must not be that dangerous." When in reality, the odds of doing it that 8th time have almost nothing to do with your first 7 attempts.

You're going to need to provide some evidence to show just how much or how little your chances improve after X peaks. With the given data in this thread, we simply to do not have enough data to say if someone has attempted X 8000m peaks, what is the chance that the chance that they will die on their X+1 attempt. But you need even more specific data than that to really answer it, since order matters. That is, if you attempted climbed 5 peaks, it matters which 5 those were and what the 6th one you're trying for is. You need to know, given someone who has climbed this X_1,X_2,...,X_n list of peaks, what is the chance they will die when they attempt to add X_n+1 peak onto their list. I think there is the data out there from Elizabeth Hawley to answer this question, but no one has done the analysis yet.

I wasn't clear. I'm talking about a more specific activity, not something as broad as "climbing an 8,000 meter peak."

So I should have said something like "I have gone up an area that had a high avalanche probability 7 times before and nothing happened so it must not be that dangerous." When in reality, doing this for the 8th time has almost nothing to do with your first 7 attempts. They are almost 100% independent. People allow their perception of the danger to be skewed by personal experience.

To put it another way, if you and I are looking at a given section with a high probability of avalanche and you have done this section 7 times before with no problem (on high probability avalanche days) and the one other time I have attempted it (on a high probability avalanche day) I was caught in an avalanche, you will likely incorrectly assess the risk as lower than it really is because of your personal experience (and I, higher). Similar to the hot hand fallacy.

[jdorje]

http://www.everestnews.com/8000.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Climbers that has died with 10 or more of the 14 8000 meter peaks include: Felix Inurrategi 13), Christian Kuntner (13, died on Annapurna), Marcel Ruedi, and Benoit Chamoux.

That implies a 4/37 fatality rate combined for the last 4 peaks. That's 2.82% fatality rate per peak. One can probably assume the last 4 attempted are among the hardest.

EDIT: 2.82% fatality rate per peak extended independently over 14 peaks would be a 33.0% chance of death.

[Alan Arnette]

I won’t even try to wade into the math arguments but as someone who has been on 8000 meter mountains 10 times (4:Everest, 1:K2, 1: Lhotse, 1: Manaslu, 1: Broad Peak, 1: Cho Oyu 1: Shishapangma) with 3 summits, I can attest that the more popular the mountain (Everest, Manaslu, Cho Oyu) people have less experience.

On a personal note, my first 14er was Longs and after spending almost a year of my life on 8000 meter mountains, I am still alive … I think.

On K2, arguably one of the more dangerous 8000ers, my observation was that most everyone there has significant experience and more importantly, mountain sense.

For me the big picture of risk is that the less climbed 8000 meter mountains i.e. less than 400 summits, have the higher death rates primarily due to: less known routes, winter attempts, remote location with less medical/rescue resources, less understood weather patterns, climbers attempting new routes, fewer climbers thus lower potential of help and finally, less use of oxygen. On the use of oxygen, looking at Everest as a proxy, of the 7001 summits, both side, all routes; 282 people (169 westerners and 113 Sherpas) have died from 1924 to now. 2.7% summited without supplemental oxygen but 36% of the deaths were those who climbed without supplemental oxygen according to the Himalayan Database.

Since I’m pretty sure this thread will devolve into Everest bashing to wit: "And how many of Everest's summitters are New York high society types getting dragged up by Sherpa's? A lot.” let me give a first hand observation.

To be sure, as Everest becomes more popular and the local Nepali/Sherpa companies offer lower costs climbs ($30K vs $65K), less experienced people are attracted to the mountain. However, in my observation, the vast majority i.e. greater than 60% have sufficient experience to be there with climbs on Denali, Aconcagua and/or another 8000 meter mountain. That still leaves ~150 each season with climbs on Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc or Rainier as their sole experience thus the death rates will increase on Everest due to climber/guide error in the future - imho.

I know this table reflects summits to death and not attempts to deaths but for discussion it might be useful. I compiled it in 2012 using the latest numbers from the Himalayan Database, 8000ers.com and my own research. I am positive it is not 100% accurate but is very close. The only significant change is on Everest (7001/282) and Manaslu (800/70) but the rank order didn’t change significantly.

8000m deaths and summits.png (20.02 KiB) Viewed 3296 times

[peter303]

Arnettes table with two modifications is 878 / 15408 about 6% or one per 17 attempts.

My condolences to the 878.

[martinleroux]

I know this table reflects summits to death and not attempts to deaths but for discussion it might be useful.

That's not a trivial distinction. As Alan's experience bears out, the average success rate on 8000m summits is quite modest. It's about 1:3 or 1:4 for Nepalese 8000ers according to Elizabeth Hawley's book (http://www.himalayandatabase.com/downloads/hbnsampl.pdf). As mentioned a couple of pages back, when you compare deaths to attempts as opposed to summits the average mortality rate is a relatively modest 1.3%.

This also highlights the futility of applying a broad set of statistics to a very small group of elite climbers. The statistics tell us that for every 100 "average" climbers attempting an "average" 8000m peak, about 1-2 die, about 25 or 30 reach the summit and return alive, and the rest return alive but without having summited. Clearly the sort of climber that's able to summit most or all of the 14 8000ers must have a better success rate than 25-30% per attempt, otherwise there wouldn't be enough Himalayan climbing seasons in the course of their climbing career. So if they're doing much better than average when it comes to success rates, what sort of mortality rates are they subject to? Who knows? If one were to guess that it's the same as average (1-2% per attempt) that would imply a cumulative mortality rate of roughly 15-25% in the course of 14 summit attempts, which is broadly consistent with the data that Jorge cited.

[I Man]

This thread is ridiculous.

[ezabielski]

This thread is ridiculous.

14ers.com has an armchair mountaineering quota it's gotta fullfill before the end of the year!