Japanese Climber Who Is Much Tougher Than Me, Having Lost Nine Fingers To Everest, Dies On His Eighth Attempt
A Japanese climber, who lost nine fingertips to frostbite in a previous expedition, died on Monday during an attempt to climb Mount Everest, an official said, the second person to die on the world’s highest mountain during the current climbing season.
Kuriki had made seven unsuccessful attempts to scale Everest.
In 2012, Kuriki spent two days in a snow hole at 27,000 feet (8,230 metres) on Everest in temperatures below minus 20 Celsius. That was when he had to have his fingertips amputated.
Full story here.
Look, yes this is sad. But this was really one of only two possible outcomes in this situation. As soon as you lose nine of your fingers on this mountain, you enter a different game. Before that, on any of the previous fucking seven attempts, you could have been like, “eh I’m not doing this again” But with one finger left, you’re Michael Jordaning this mountain: you either summit or die. What’s the alternative? You be the guy with one finger who forever got pwnd by Everest? You can’t be that guy. Forever, people are going to be asking you how you lost all of your fingers. You can say it took you nine fingers and however many attempts to summit Everest. You can’t say you failed.
Next point, how technical of a climb is Everest? Or, better put, can you climb Everest with one finger? Not to say either way its easy, but actually having to climb would be INSANE. What’s this guy doing, Scaling the cliffs of Everest on one-fingered-pull-up at a time? Jesus! In all seriousness, this guy clearly had no quit in him. I imagine that any climber who undertakes any part of the Everest summit knows the risk, and Nobukazu Kuriki was no exception. Whether he made it or not, it’s clear that this dude had balls of steel and guts for days. Most people don’t have the make-up to make that trek once, and this dude did it eight times. The climbing world lost a good one.
