Citation Needed - First Expeditions to Mount Everest

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Mount Everest[3] is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point.[4] Its elevation (snow height) of 8,848.86 m (29,031 ft 8+1⁄2 in) was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.[5][6]

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnick and I'll be your guide among the summits of comedy this evening, but I'll need some Sherpas of Chicanery. Noah, Keith, Tom, and Cecil, gentlemen, welcome to the podcast you're on. Sherpas of Chicanery is the name of my barbershop quartet. We're playing at the Y after your grunge band, so.

Finally, white male podcasters, the unsung heroes of every journey getting there. Yes! All right. Fentanyl Brownie, the grunge band is pretty awesome. I feel like you were making fun of it. Thank you. Also, fun fact, lots of people use Sherpa

to mean like a general term for mountain guide, but it's actually the name of the Himalayan people, indigenous to an area near the border of modern day Nepal and Tibet. And if you look at the graph or the usage of that word over time, it looks like a mountain that starts around 1950. How fun was that fact?

Very fun. That was a fun fact. Not for them, but for everyone else, it's very fun. I think it's a fun fact. You know, I didn't capitalize Sherpa, he's a bigot. That's true. And you know those guys have tons of time for podcast listening, so I am burning a bridge I need to stand upon.

That's my bad. Making it worse. All of our Sherpa patrons are pulling me off left and right. Sherpans. So much worse. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to thank our patrons, especially those of you who are Sherpas. Patrons, without you, we wouldn't be able to venture out on this expensive and dangerous

journey called comedy podcasting. You are our guiding light, and without your money, we'd be like the many corpses that line the fallow ranks of iTunes. If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Tom, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today? We'll be talking about the first expeditions to Mount Everest today because Cecil's stolen

my people who die in the cold. I do people die in the cold too. Right? Look, Cecil, you are in a war and you are snapping up the last succulent drops of white guy goes to a cold place to die material before this well runs dry. Are you ready to lead the way? Well, I would put you on a short rope, Eli, but I want to give you enough so that you can... Well, you know what I was going to say.

Forget it. Yeah, obviously. So what is Mount Everest? Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking me a Mount Everest is the world's tallest mountain from sea level I love all the nerds in our audience that force you to include from sea level in that answer Okay, darling darling you can come back inside from out of the car Oh, it's okay. It's okay, darling. Darling, you can come back inside from out of the car. He said from sea level.

It's 8,848 meters tall or 29,031 feet tall if you're American. The peak of Everest is the typical cruising altitude of a regional jet. Winds on top of the mountain will occasionally reach 170 miles per hour as it interacts with the jet stream at that altitude. It's a pretty dangerous mountain to climb and 330 people have died trying to summit it. The first recorded time that someone reached the top was 71 years ago today. Yeah and we've been watching people fail at that and also show off their ice crusted snot beards at low level film festivals ever since. It's great.

Crazy billionaire money. I'm building an escalator up that thing, if only to put REI out of business. I'm so out to it. Mount Everest wasn't always recognized as the tallest mountain on Earth. In fact, some mountains still try to claim highest status. They just measure a little different to do it. For example, Monacaia, which is 10,200 meters tall from its base, which is actually on the ocean floor.

Yeah, you're allowed to measure from the base. That's official. We've established that. That's science. The mountain itself is only 4,205 meters from sea base. That's a fictitious, we've established that. That's science. The mountain itself is only 4,205 meters from sea level. If we're talking about height above base range, Denali in Alaska is taller by a couple thousand feet. And if we're talking about distance to the earth's center, then Jim Barazzo. No one's talking about it.

I would be talking about this if... You're not the guy talking about this. about. I would be talking about this if Cecil. A quarter of this podcast is talking about it. Sometimes I go instead of from the base from the middle of my body and measure it out. And then that's how he gets two inches. You're measuring from the taint or whatever. What about from behind the taint of the earth center? Exactly. So that would be a Jim Barazzo in Ecuador. What about from behind the taint of the Earth's center? Yeah, exactly, right? Okay. So that would be Chimborazo in Ecuador.

It's the winner at 6,384 kilometers from the center of the Earth because the Earth bulges at the equator. But if you measure from sea level, Everest beats them all. Okay, but mountain climbing triathlon, which is what both of those comparisons bring us to, is an awesome idea, right? You swim to the mountain, then you climb the mountain, then you bike down the other side to the center of the earth. I mean, get on this, people. All right, Eli, I'll do it, but only if I get to wear a chainsaw-proof bear suit on the way.

I know a guy who can get you a bear-proof chainsaw suit, if that helps. There's actually a Swiss guy, biked it all the way to Everest climbed it and then biked all the way home. Jesus. Cool. Holy shit. Seriously. You're touching how much you don't know his name huh? Right? I don't and nobody here's the thing you only know the first person no one knows anybody else. And that dude's name is Sally McLady. Yeah, a nameless millionaire. Wasted their whole lives. They could have just hugged their dad. Spoilers.

Originally, Kenchenjunga, which is the third highest mountain in the world, was thought to be the highest. And if you're wondering, Kenchenjunga is not K2. That's the second highest mountain. And that's in a different mountain range on the border of Kashmir and China. In 1802, the British began what they called the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India to map the country. They used 500 kilogram theodolites, which are those little viewfinders that you see the surveyors use. But in this case, they needed 12 men to carry them. They tried to enter Nepal to measure the mountains

and they were refused entry. And they thought the project would take about five years and they putted around with these 1100 pound View Masters for a little longer than that. It actually took 70 years. Jesus. They could have sent themselves a lot of backaches if they had just respected Nepal's

no solicitors or trigonometers sign on the front door. He just knocked that guy that come up there just pointing at the sign. They just don't make me tap it. I made the auto light down the block. I carried the big binoculars. I thought that might be so heavy. But an interesting discovery was made when surveying these mountains. Kenchenjungo was measured at 8,582 meters, but another peak was at 8,840 meters. That peak would become what we call Everest.

Initially, Everest, quote, was calculated to be 29,000 feet high high but was publicly declared to be 29,002 feet high in order to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate. Yeah, that felt like a lie when you said that. Who is credited with that measurement Andrew Scott-Woe He's sometimes playfully credited with being the first person to put two feet on top of Mount Everest Oh my god, I Once met a woman at a bar named Jen Smith He's like, oh what's her name and I was like Jen Smith and he's like

like Jen Smith and he's like, okay man, just like, you don't have to all start with five, five, five. No. Why would you make everything up like that? I just see. So I love that you are now plumbing the depths of antiquity to bring us historical shit tits, night soil paps, if you will. There had to be a moment though, where Wogg was like,

and it works out completely even, and everyone in his tent looked at him like he was lying and he was like, oh fuck, you all. Oh no guys, I really looked through the big binoculars, I promise. It's just insanely unlikely that they are. It's just hard to land on zero sometimes. That's just one of the numbers. It's one of the numbers. It's one of the numbers.

It's of the 10. There are 10. So before I talk about the first summit attempts and successes, I want to talk about what it takes to climb the mountain today. When it comes to technical skill of climbing, Everest isn't the hardest mountain to summit. Many of the ropes are fixed and a lot of the companies

that run climbing tours use Nepalese locals called Sherpas to help carry things, set up tents, cook food, guide climbers to the top. The three things that make Everest difficult to summit are 1. The elevation, 8,000 meters is called the death zone. 2. The crowds of people all trying to summit in a tiny window of optimal weather and three the copious amount to disposable cash you need to actually book an outfitter. The most deadly hazard of all, capitalism. Yeah see so there's always a

part of me that wonders if I've like got what it takes to make it on a climb like that and then I sleep like in a hotel overnight without packing my own latex pillows my neck hurts for a week and I realize I've never missed a meal in my adult life without pouting about it and I'm still like yeah I could probably do it. I could totally do it. I feel like they should have put the deaths. I feel like it doesn't need all three reasons right? Like death zone number one you're done with reasons. There's a death zone. Also, by the way, I feel like they should put the death zone

at 8002 meters. Like, I just, so it sounds more realistic that way. Somebody dies at 7999 meters, like, pussy. This is bullshit. You're not even in the death zone. His friend drags him up that one extra meter, just so you know. That's gonna be really embarrassing. I don't want to embarrass him. Nobody wants that on their tombstone.

All right. So let's talk about altitude and the death zone. Now this is above 8000 meters. Like I said before, the atmosphere here is 33% as dense as sea level. So for reference at sea level, our air is 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen. At 8,000 meters, the air is pretty much the same composition percentages. There's just only 33% of it. If you just walked straight from sea level to 8,000 meters, you'd die pretty horribly,

which is why it takes several weeks to slowly acclimate to the extreme altitudes. In the death zone you need to breathe more, your heart needs to pump more, and your blood vessels need to expand. It takes time for your body to adjust. Just take up smoking it's so much easier. It's cooler going up Everest. Climbers at Everest start out in base camp which takes 12 to 14 days of walking. It's about 80 miles. Basecamp is 5,364 meters or 17,598 feet elevation and the climbers will spend several weeks here. All right I understand the practical reasons for this but it always seems like cheating to me that they start 60% of the way up the mountain. Right? It always seems like cheating to me that they start 60% of the way up the mountain. Right?

During... Yeah, that's bullshit. I'm mad about it. I just learned that now. I'm fucking mad about that. Well, I mean, they do climb up to that place, right? Or do they drive there? No.

No, they have to walk. They have to walk. You have to walk. They have to walk. You have to walk. You have to walk the whole fucking mountain. No, you don't. I'm just picturing... They helicopter it. There's one dude. There's one dude. You have to walk up to that. Nobody cheats. You have to walk the whole fucking mountain. I'm just a helicopter. There's one dude.

There's one dude with like seven Sherpas and a Palikwin and he's just getting locked up in her picture. Heath meeting a guy who climbed Everest. Well, half the time I did the hard part. And have you just, you know, you know, I'm doing numbers correctly. Punches him with his frostbitten fingers right in the face. I didn't even feel it. They break right off.

Take a golf cart up there? Come on. You gotta walk the course, man. So during the time that the climbers spend at base camp, they will climb to various parts of the mountain, sometimes staying at higher elevations for a few nights, and then they come back down. This method of acclimatizing helps climbers get used to the changes in altitude

and allows their bodies to adapt to let them live at higher parts of the mountain. People know you can just kill a bunch of kids, right? You don't have to do... Oh, jeez, I'm sorry. No, I'm just saying if you kill a bunch of kids, they'll write your name down and say, I hope that's not a callback later because I can delete it.

We'll see. I hope there's not a callback today. Couldn't you just do a few? Nah. I think if you do- It went straight to a bunch. I'm just saying. I think if you do more than six, you're guaranteed to be more famous than anyone except the first

guy. There's no acclimatizing to the death zone though. The climbers that go to Everest stay outside the death zone until they're ready to summit. They enter the death zone just to get to the top and then they exit to a lower altitude. Yeah. Oh man, that sounds hard. It's just like... So I was at a ski resort and I was in the hot tub and it was a cold day and I jumped out for a second and then jumped back in. It sounds really fucking hard. Like that. For Everest climbers. It was a cold day and I jumped out for a second and jumped back in. It sounds really fucking hard. Like that.

For Everest climbers. With supplemental oxygen, the human body should not stay in the death zone for more than 20 hours. Two Sherpas hold the record for longest time surviving the death zone without supplemental oxygen at 21 hours and with supplemental oxygen at 90 hours. Ah, that doesn't feel great, right? That's like learning that the world fasting record goes to some guy's personal chef, right?

You really wanted that to be on purpose. See, so man, I am not an expert on anything, anything at all actually, but I'm just thinking the human body shouldn't even go to something called the death zone, much less stay there for 20 hours. Yeah, no. Like, is the top of Mount Everest covered

in winning lottery tickets to give you blowjobs? Why are we going? It's filled with garbage and probably poop. But yeah, I guess I could use this. I could stay home if I wanted to. In the death zone, you're basically suffocating yourself. So what you're saying is masturbating on top of Everest would be fucking epic.

Your body is fighting to get oxygen distributed. So you're breathing a lot heavier and deeper. Your heart is pumping faster and harder and all your blood vessels are expanding to get that blood all over your body. Your capillaries cannot expand though. So sometimes your blood will just leak out inside of you because it can't get to those areas in your body. You don't think so good at higher elevations either. Getting less oxygen is called hypoxia and the symptoms are dizziness, confusion, difficulty concentrating and impaired

judgment. You can also get a thing called HACE, H-A-C-E, or high altitude cerebral edema where your brain swells up with fluid. Or you could get HAPE, H-A-P-E, high altitude pulmonary edema where your lungs fill up with fluid. I like that they did playful acronyms. Also because your blood isn't flowing at the rate it normally does, your extremities get colder quicker which can lead to frostb, which can lead to amputations. Okay, just take up smoking again. So kids aren't even fast.

Exactly. You can just stop relating our tapes. Absolutely not. Together at those kinds of heights, you can lose consciousness and this can happen without warning. You can also experience organ damage or organ failure. Lack of oxygen can also cause you to have hypoxic seizures, which are pretty much self-explanatory. At high elevation, you can also have a hard time consuming water or food because your

body's basically shutting down. So many people experience dehydration and malnutrition. Also at that height and activity level you can burn about six to ten thousand calories a day which is like three English breakfasts in metric. Wrong. The English breakfast is so foul it cannot be eating. That is a zero calorie meal. I love it. No you do. Thank you. Unrelatable. Baked beans in a tomato? Mushroom? None of that. But like also the other stuff. Yeah, all the other stuff.

A slice of ham that pretends to be bacon. Liar's ham. Delicious. Liar's bacon? No. Yeah, that's bullshit. It's not bacon. What have we got left here? There's the baked beans are out, the tomatoes out.

You got Liar's bacon. Where are we at? No, baked beans are good. You just said ham's good. The eggs are overcooked. They're only cooked on one. I mean, you can make a batter some or some side up side of- Listen, the English cuisine doesn't have much. Just let him have this one thing, Tom.

I'm not giving up on this, no. Heath calls me Liar's Ham on the Discord. In lots of cases today, the crowded nature of Everest Base Camp, which lacks proper sanitation, can lead to a lot of stomach illnesses in the climbers, So keeping anything down at lower altitudes even can be a challenge. Cut to me at base camp explaining to the medics that this is normal for me. They're trying to get me onto a chopper. The window to climb Everest is short. There's a week to two weeks every May and every September to summit.

The rest of the year, the top of Everest is inside the jet stream or it's in the middle of a snowstorm. The weather is pretty horrific. Even in optimal climbing conditions, the temperatures are at negative 15 Fahrenheit or negative 26 Celsius without any wind chill. My dumb ass read that in your notes Cecil and I thought, why wouldn't there be any wind chill? There's also significantly less UV protection. While much of your body is covered in thick clothing, your eyes quickly become damaged. The effect is amplified by the snow because it reflects the sunlight and you can become what they call snow blonde.

Sheet terrible, terrible stuff, Cecil. Hey, I'm going to go on a limb here and just say, I'm betting those outfitters get the full deposit up front Modern climbers have lots of very refined equipment that makes it very lightweight and durable Modern ropes are lighter and can handle more weight crampons are lighter and more durable Clothing and boots are sturdier lighter weight and more ins more insulated. Base layering and under layers are lighter and warmer. All the camping equipment can handle high winds, cold temperatures, it's lightweight. Modern toe warmers and hand warmers, lighter oxygen setups, and better masks make climbing much easier than it was for the very first summits.

All right. Well, sounds like things are growing ever closer to the temperature-controlled bubble with Netflix. I would need to do this shit, so... While I open an account at Gander Mountain, we'll take a quick break for a little apropos of nothing. Hi, I'm Tom Curry. And I'm Eli Bosnik. Does your heart burst with desire for adventure? Do you long to experience the extreme? Push the edge. Find the limits of the human condition.

Introducing therapy. This extreme mental sport is a great way to push the limits and also maybe stop doing expensive, deadly stuff with your one precious life. Just listen to these satisfied customers. I was the world's most daring free solo climber, but thanks to therapy, I realized my dad just should have been nicer to me. For therapy, I longed to discover the Kurotoa Mountains of Bangalai, but thanks to therapy, now I'm just divorced.

Therapy because you should not want to do those things under any circumstances. Okay, but what if I- Just call your dad! Because you should not want to do those things under any circumstances. Okay. But, but what if I just call your dad? Yeah, fine. Calling. And we're back. When we left off, you shouldn't try climbing Mount Everest now. And in the past, things were even shouldn'ter.

What say you, Susan? Very true. Super concise, Eli. The first group to try to summit Everest was George Mallory's British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition in 1921. Sort of wandered around the base like a dog looking for somewhere to pee and then just decided to give up. One of the members of the expedition suffered from frostbite. The winds were gale force and they decided just to try next year. At this point, even though the climbing was a failure, nobody died yet.

And can I say? Spoiler. Good for them. It takes a lot of balls to go to the base of Mount Everest and be like, hey, you know what? Fuck this, Albert's toes hurt. Let's just not. Let's just fucking not.

In 1922, Mallory returned and led another group to Everest, hoping to summit. On May 20th the team began their ascent from Camp 4 at 23,000 feet on the North Coal without supplemental oxygen. They planned to camp at 26,000 feet and they were using porters to help with carrying equipment. But as it started getting dark they decided to camp at 25,000 feet and let the porters descend to their camp. The next day the weather was terrible so they decided to camp at 25,000 feet and let the porters descend to their camp. The next day, the weather was terrible, so they decided to start late.

One of the climbers had frostbite. He decided to sleep in, try not to slum it. Hey guys, I'm going to take a self-care day. Maybe get a little, I don't know. I'm hitting the snooze. I'm going to get a little brunch after this. Do you go without me? He just wake up.

Yeah. Oh, got myself some frostbite. Nothing a little lion won't fix though. Yeah, like I feel myself some frostbite and nothing a little lion won't fix though. I feel like the frostbite decided he wasn't going to try to summit. They estimated how much they had to climb and they knew they had to keep a certain rate to stay on schedule, to reach the top and return while it was still light out. But as they neared 8,225 meters, they knew they were too far behind schedule and decided to descend. This was the highest any recorded climber had ever gone, but it was still not the peak of Everest.

As the climbers were descending, one of the teams slipped and he basically knocked down two other guys and they all started sliding toward the edge of a glacier with a thousand foot drop off. Mallory jammed his ice axe into the ground and he wrapped the safety line around it stopping their fall and saved them. Okay I'm picturing British Stallone being like I know that's a cool thing to do, but I bet he made the rest of that climb unbearable. And then I was like, whatcha! I got you. Yeah, man, we were there. We all were.

It's just, you know, you read about heroism in like books and stuff, and then you're actually the one doing it, you know? Dude, this expedition was your idea. It's dangerous and we almost died This is not a win for you seriously man. Okay guys. This is Not the way to talk to your best friend like are you hearing not our best friend man? It saved your life from you still They tried again seven days later in May of 1922.

This time they decided to actually use supplemental oxygen. Now it's important to understand that these people had primitive and heavy oxygen tanks that were fickle and didn't work properly. I'm not the only person imagining them sticking their legs out of an iron lung Flintstone style. Yeah. They were also just in like wool sports coats. If you see a photo of these guys, they look like they're going to teach a humanities class at a state college, not climb a mountain. I'm not kidding.

It's not great. I looked it up. It's so silly. Look, it's like Jersey dudes, the ski mountain with the cargo shorts from old Navy and like a black leather jacket But like British time. It's how I picture all of Heath's college friends will dress at his wedding That's how you should picture that they were showing at one point They were showing like all the the high technology that they have 1950s people eventually climbed it with and one of of them wore like no shit, a crocheted undershirt.

And that was like, everybody's like, whoa, no way, bro. Like, it's insane. All right, so the next attempt was George Finch, Jeffrey Bruce, and Tebjörur Burra. They were planning on having Burra carry the oxygen up to 27,000 feet, but it collapsed at 26,000. So the other two carried what they could and

they sent Burrow back down. The pair made it farther than the original group did the week prior at 8,321 meters, but the pair knew they wouldn't make the summit. So they decided to descend. Oh, Cecil, I must have misread the episode title. You're calling this one a bunch of fucking quitters They tried to ascend one more time two weeks later getting close to camp for and then quote an Avalanche began on an ice cliff above them and swept over the entire group Four members of the team and the Porter managed to dig out from beneath the snow and saw a group of four porters Approximately a hundred and fifty feet below them gesturing down the slope

The avalanche had swept the other nine porters into a crevasse the remaining team members Immediately began a search and rescue effort eventually finding eight of the nine porters Only two had survived they built a small memorial and went home defeated, end quote. What a tease of a way to present that though, right? Like they're like, well, you know, they found eight of the nine of them and you're like, oh, well that's way better than I expected. And then it's like, mostly they were corpses though,

as it turns out. Damn, man. They came back the following year. Come on, you got to stop. What has to go wrong to call it? We found eight out of nine of them. This is our fucking year. The first descent of Everest that year was not even remotely successful.

They had planned to set up camps all the way up and they didn't make it up as high as planned and they had to head back down. They passed the second group on the way down as they were heading up. This group was Howard Sommerveld and Edward Norton. They reached camp four at 25,200 feet by 1 p.m. They spent the night there. They climbed to camp five the next day but they lost two porters to an injury on the way up and they had to send them back down. The next morning at 6.30am, the two attempted the summit. At a certain point, Somerville can't breathe, so he sends Norton on and he waits for him.

Norton continues, but gets dizzy and has vision problems, so he comes back down. Jesus Christ. So trigger warning if you're grossed out by bodies falling apart at high altitude Okay, you know see so when a trigger warning is graphic enough that it needs its own trigger warning. It's Hey, hey if you're not grossed out by bodies falling apart Why don't you just go ahead and buy feeling good by David? David burns, and if you're only grossed out by that happening at low altitude, that's a weird David Burns. And if you're only grossed out by that happening at low altitude, that's a weird line. Thank you.

That's a really weird line. All right. So here we go. On the way back down, quote, during their descent of the North Ridge at around 25,000 feet, Somerville experienced intense coughing and dislodged something in his throat, severely obstructing his breathing. He was close to death and saved his own life by forcibly pressing on his chest with both hands, dislodging the obstruction that came into his mouth and coughing up blood.

The obstruction was a slough from the mucous membrane lining of his larynx caused by frostbite." Jesus fuck! See that's another downside to this shit. This room is to potential climber Maybe you're chiseled into history as the first man to climb Everest But maybe Wikipedia tells the rest of history forever about you hocking the world's most deadly Luke You think his name comes up with anything other than a loogie guy rest of eternity. The fucking Chrono Mancers who step through a portal to see where we went wrong after the fallout clears

are going to be like, and that guy coughed up his throat. Gross. Gross. That guy's dreams. What do you? You should call his dad. He fucking heimliched his own throat out of me. He's like, hey boss. He totally heimliched himself. Hey boss, I got a frostbite inside of me.

Right? Zed, I don't feel like that's okay. That can't be. That's the warmest spot that I'll have inside of me. Yeah. So for the final attempt that year. Come on! There's another,

was the dead larynx not a big enough piece to shut this down? What is happening? Slough of dead larynx feels like a deal breaker. If you say that phrase, you're done with whatever you were doing. So is the entire mountain just like littered with frostbitten dicks that have fallen off? How is anybody and giant radioactive loogies? I don't know, man. I don't know. Intact, I guess. I don't know.

Andrew Irvine. That's the third name for our band, by the way, radioactive loogies. We broke up, we got back together. My friend Chris is in it now. Now we're radioactive loogies. It's a different artistic direction. Thank you. So Andrew Irvine and George Mallory made their way

up to the mountain with oxygen and were accompanied by eight porters. Well you know we've actually got a great track record of finding our porters after accidents. So you know what do you mean how alive? No follow ups. You know Sherpa is actually an indigenous word. Oh, you're gone. We made him a really nice memorial. Hold on. Was that a fun fact you had? It sounded fun.

So they sent four porters back down to Camp Four from Camp Five with a note. Quote, there is no wind here and things look hopeful. End quote. Cue ominous music. They left on the morning of June 7th, 1924. They ascended to Camp 6, which was at 8,138 meters. On the following morning, Mallory and Irvine climbed up to the summit, or tried to climb up to the summit, where they were last seen on the mountain at 1250 p.m. continuing upward. This would be the last

time they were seen alive. The weather turned and they never came back down. There's some people who speculate that they made it all the way to summit and then they just died on the way back down. Thus they're the actual first to summit. But I tend to agree with the other side that says I don't care if you make it all the way back up. You have to make it all the way back down for it to count. You gotta be alive. Otherwise, it's just a really expensive practice. Yeah, pictures and don't die or get the fuck out.

Absolutely, that does not count. Especially if your reason for trying to scale Mount Everest was because it's there. That's a quote from Mallory. That is Mallory's actual answer. That's his quote, yeah. After Mallory and Irvine's death, there would be a few attempts at the mountain,

but none were successful. Instead, the world would have to wait 30 years for a group to come close. Mallory and Irvine had tried to come through Tibet to climb the mountain. Mallory did not think that the route through Nepal was possible and had famously called the Khumbu Icefall quote, terribly steep and broken,

end quote. And he's right, it's five kilometers of constantly shifting glacial ice, but it didn't matter much anyway because the Nepalese government had closed off the route and wouldn't grant any attempts for decades. And while some tried to go up via the north face through Tibet, none were successful. But in 1952, a group came even closer to the summit when Nepal allowed an expedition to give it a go. Yeah, Nepal finally gives in.

It's like, hey man, I was just trying to save you from like puking up your own frostbitten ball sack, but if you're going to insist on speaking to the manager, go on ahead. Right ahead. Right ahead. In 1952, the Swiss Mount Everest expedition led by Edouard Weiss-Dunant tried to summit through Nepal. They made it up to the South Coal, which is where the last camp is normally set. And two climbers, Raymond Lambert and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, were able to climb to 8, hundred and ninety five meters on the southeast ridge breaking the record of the Mallory expedition

But not actually summoning the mountain they spent the night there without sleeping bags without a stove Forced to melt snow over a candle for a paltry amount of water, but why a paltry amount? I mean, there's plenty of snow But, well, high up poultry amount. I mean, there's plenty of snow. There's not a fire. Just throw a poultry amount a little better in the wiki. Yeah. Oh. They had problems with their oxygen and they couldn't get it to work properly, but the men tried their damnedest, even crawling on all fours at some point to try to make it

to the top. If we stay low, the air is a little thicker. Is that what you said? Because it's... I'm not doing that. Yeah, I get it though. One time, one time I ordered ice cream from DoorDash and the delivery guy set it down sideways and then the melty

bits kind of leaked over the inside of my bag and I guess the fucking worst. What I'm saying is I too know true hardship. Right. Why never tip on DoorDash because you never know when they're going to do that. Really sorry do that. Really sorry about that.

The man to finally summit Everest, Edmund Hillary, saw their encampment and he had this to say about it, quote, an incredibly lonely site, the battered framework of the tent that Tenzing and Raymond Lambert of the 1952 Swiss expedition pitched over a year before and where they had spent an extremely uncomfortable night without food without drink and without sleeping bags what a tough couple they had been but perhaps not very well organized Hillary thought that Tenzing and Lambert were not sufficiently hydrated having relied on cheese and snow melted over a candle for sustenance. And he insisted on everyone keeping their fluids up by melting

snow over a primus stove for water." End quote. And as I pass into history, I thought to myself, man, those guys suck at the thing I'm doing. I'm writing this down and literally everyone will read it. Which is, I love that Hillary agreed with my joke about the candy. Oh look, it's that guy's throat, Loogie. That guy's gross, right?

I just want to take a moment to really cement his position as yucko. The next year, the British expedition tried to climb the mountain. They established camps on the mountain like other groups, and the leader had chosen Tom Bordillion and Charles Evans to attempt to summit first. They made it to the South Summit, which is not the main summit by 1pm, and they didn't make it across the rock step that connects the South Summit with the actual summit. They had a problem with the oxygen and it took too long to fix and they had to turn back a hundred meters from the summit. Oh, all right. I've got an idea. I'm gonna hack up some dead larynx like a slough of that and throw it.

That'll count, right? Still me! That's still me! The next climbing pair was the New Zealander, Edmund Hillary, and Sherpa, Tensing Norge, who had accompanied the Swiss expedition the year before. They made it to the South Summit and then traversed the step to the summit. That step is still named for Edmund Hillary, the Hillary step. They made it to the top at 1130 AM on May 29th, 1953. They took some pictures of the top and they buried some candy and a small cross in the snow.

And they had taken their oxygen off for about 10 minutes up there and Hillary said, quote, he was becoming rather clumsy fingered and slow moving, end quote. So they came back down and when they came back to camp, He was becoming rather clumsy fingered and slow moving." So they came back down and when they came back to camp, Hillary is said to have told another Mountaineer, George Lowell, Well, George, we knocked the bastard off. Are we sure that wasn't a reference to a third guy that went up with them?

I like that at the very tip they took off their protection just to see how it would feel Right and apparently they did some finger stuff. Yeah, they were clumsy fingering clumsy fingering things with my finger Yeah, right now you guys noticed that right? Seductively clumsy Tenzing it looks like I'm not gonna be able to show you that magic trick after all We'll never know your card. After the accolades started coming in, a controversy started. Who was the first up Everest? Was it Tenzing or was it Hillary?

Though the team had tried to pass off this question and say it was a team effort, a lot of the press in India where Tenzing was from wanted to confirm that it was Tenzing. Quote, in Kathmandu, a large banner depicted Tenzing pulling a semi-conscious Hillary to the summit. Tenzing eventually ended the speculation by revealing in his 1955 ghostwritten autobiography, Man of Everest, that Hillary was first. End quote. All right. And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? If you ever climbing anything and you cough up part of you, just stop. Just quit.

Just don't do it. And are you ready for the quiz? I am. Let's do this. All right, Cecil, I took a look around and you can go online and book a climbing trip right now, right now for Everest. So what is required to book this trip? Hey, around a hundred thousand dollars all in for flights,

Sherpas, food, et cetera, by the way, vegan meals are offered. In case that was what was holding you back. He like that was, thank you. B about two months of your life, which is the average time to summit, including acclimatizing at altitude. See evidence that you have experienced climbing mountains? Nope. D, C is not the answer.

Seriously, you do not have to provide any evidence that you have ever actually climbed anything before at all. It is suggested, but not required. Also E, 5% of people who attempt this climb will die every year, and F, there are no blowjob lottery tickets at the top. No, no word does it say. Yeah, I don't think they care about fucking like C at all cuz a hundred thousand dollar check already Yeah, so uh so yeah everything I guess it's all of the above.

All of the above. It is all of the above. Cause you said C is not the answer. Secret answer G or whatever. Alright, so you still C is not the answer. Secret answer, G or whatever. All right, so you still got another one for you. Edmund Hillary, big name, but almost nobody has heard of Tenzing Norgay. Tenzing Norgay, what's up baby? Even though Norgay was clearly the one who deserves most of the credit. I feel like he threw the guy to the top and was like, yeah, Hillary made it first.

Right, carried him on his back like piggybacked him out there. Right. So you mentioned his ghost-written Autobiography which of the following would be a better title for his book about Edmund Hillary clearly stealing the fame a the height supremacist White washing offensive Phenomenal Tom Sawyer thing. See Everest control.

Oh, that's good. It's so good. You Sherpa Nepalese guy didn't make it all happen. Sure. It's a toss up between A and C. I'm going to go with a height supremacist. So good. That is correct.

Well done. All right. I have one for you, Cecil. Nobody should ever have to go after Heath in a pun making exhibition. Why is that? A, Heath thinks entirely in puns. B, Heath was trained by ancient pun monks in a mountaintop temple or something. C, Heath puts...

Of course they are, yeah. Heath puts way more thought into this part of the show than me or D Who am I kidding? No amount of thought would have equaled the height supremacist. I just don't have that in me I think C gets me into an argument somebody go with D who am I kidding? It is D Alright well I didn't do this part of the show so I win And so I want to know what essay next Alright well for Cecil Noah Tom and Heath. I'm Eli Bosnic. Thank you for hanging out with us today

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