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Matshona Dhliwayo

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“The Gilkey Memorial is a grisly necessity because corpses rarely make it down the mountain in one piece. For Everest losses, families sometimes send a recovery team. This doesn't happen on K2. The Savage Mountain devours its victims during the long winter beteween climbing seasons. It encases the torsos in ice and grates them against the rocks, only to spit out the digested remains decades later, scattering limbs among the avalanche debris. When Art Gilkey's team gathered stones to honor their friend in 1953, they started a morbid tradition. To keep the campsites sanitary, climbers began using the memorial as a place to dispose of the fingers, pelvic bones, arms, heads, and legs found in the glacial melt. Burying these scraps under the Gilkey Memorial felt more respectful than leaving them to the ravens. For more than half a century, the memorial has been a place to caution the living and consecrate the dead. Mountaineers attempting K2 visit the site to remind themselves of what they are getting into......On hot days, the cairn stews with the scent of defrosting flesh, and the odor clings to mourners' hair and clothing.” (Buried in the Sky, p. 102).”

MountaineeringK2Sky BurialGilkey Memorial
Book:Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day
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“...[B]uddhists prefer to cremate the dead. The smoke carries the spirit to the sacred realm above...When someone dies above the timberline and it's hard to find firewood, a sky burial substitues for cremation. Although outsiders consider sky burials barbaric, [to Buddhists] this was the sacred wqy to free the soul. During a sky burial, Buddhist lamas or others with religious authority carry the body to a platform on a hill. While burning incense and reciting mantras, they hack the corpse into chunks and slices. They pound the bones with a rock or hammer, beating the flesh into a pulp and mixing in tea, butter, and milk. The preparation attracts vultures, and the birds consume the carcass, carrying the spirit aloft and burying it in the sky, where it belongs.” (Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day, p. 103)”

BuddhismMountaineeringK2Sky Burial
Book:Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day
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“[Everest’s] fatality rate - the percentage of climbers who went above Base Camp and died - had averaged 0.7 the previous decade [1998 - 2008]…In 2008, the fatality rate of those leaving [K2] base camp for a summit bid was 30.5%, higher than the casualty rate at Omaha Beach on D-Day.”

MountaineeringMt EverestK2The Savage Mountain
Book:Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day
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“Peter Croft once explained the feeling you get from free soloing as a heightened type of perception. A little edge that you need to stand on looks huge—everything comes into high relief. That’s just what happens to your body and your mind when you’re focused intensely on the feedback you’re getting from the environment and there are no other distractions. You become an instinctive animal rather than a person trying to do a hard climb, and that perception doesn’t immediately go away when you get to the top. It dulls over time, but for a while it feels like you almost have super senses. Everything is more intense—the sounds of the swifts flying around or the colors of the sun going down. A lot of times I don’t want to go down, I don’t want it to end.”

FlowClimbingFree SoloAlex HonnoldEl CapitanPeter Croft
Book:The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life
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