Everest

Roy Al Maile

good documentary on the first Irishman to climb K2, Ger McDonnell, and the deadliest avalanche on that mountain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs307D4KFKU

edit, still people commenting 'hope he is found safe' on gofundme...

Sunrise_Sunset

tuxy wrote: »

The person who owns the page can offer a refund. So you could try contacting them.
If you paid by credit/debit card you could try disputing the translation.

Judging by what posters have said about comments being removed, I doubt a refund would be given by the organizer in that way.
I did just read that you can request a refund on the day that you donate, as it wouldn't have been drawn down yet by the organizer. But anything after that, and the organizer has probably already drawn it down to their account. This is stated on the Gofundme page which is interesting.

tuxy

Sunrise_Sunset wrote: »

Judging by what posters have said about comments being removed, I doubt a refund would be given by the organizer in that way.

That was at a time when money was coming in really fast. They needed to keep people believing that he may be alive or that a recovery mission for the body was sensible. Now that it has died down and the refund request won't be public anyway they may decide to offer a limited number of refunds.

ToBeFrank123

Roy Al Maile wrote: »

edit, still people commenting 'hope he is found safe' on gofundme...

Very naïve if so.
It was always going to be a recovery operation, and a virtually impossible one at that. I don't think he will ever be recovered and mountaineering experts and those who know Everest need to be clear about this so people are not donating to a potentially lost cause.

redmgar

NIMAN wrote: »

I am wondering how she came about setting the target at €750,000 to begin with though?

This was a limit put by gofundme

Sunrise_Sunset

tuxy wrote: »

That was at a time when money was coming in really fast. They needed to keep people believing that he may be alive or that a recovery mission for the body was sensible. Now that it has died down and the refund request won't be public anyway they may decide to offer a limited number of refunds.

Yes, maybe. I didn't donate. But it's interesting reading that on the Gofundme site. For people donating through Gofundme for this or any other campaign.

https://support.gofundme.com/hc/en-us/articles/204150420-Requesting-a-Refund

Panrich

Roy Al Maile wrote: »

good documentary on the first Irishman to climb K2, Ger McDonnell, and the deadliest avalanche on that mountain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs307D4KFKU

edit, still people commenting 'hope he is found safe' on gofundme...

Thanks for the link. Will watch this later. K2 has a very difficult descent and many of the summiteers die on the way back down. It’s far more difficult than Everest apparently.

Muahahaha

SusieBlue wrote: »

God, seeing the video of the poor Sherpa struggling up the mountain with the monstrous bag of supplies & tents while the climbers followed hands free was hard to watch.
Awful to imagine what hardship a person has in life that they not only regularly scale Everest, but they do so carrying massive burdens & loads, putting themselves at even greater risk of death.
Forget Barretstown, the money should be donated to the Sherpas.

The loads the Sherpas carry are unreal, when you walk the trail to Everest Base Camp you pass these guys out a lot. They walk for about 500m and take a break by sitting on their stick but still fully loaded up. Then they go again and again till they reach whereever the delivery point is.



The last time I was up there a few years back I saw one Sherpa with a fully sized fridge freezer on his back and another two of them struggling to carry a bloody pool table up to some bar.

MadYaker

I'd love to hike as far as first base camp on Everest. A mate of mine did it last year and it looked amazing and not too dangerous or difficult.

Squatter

Muahahaha wrote: »

The last time I was up there a few years back I saw one Sherpa with a fully sized fridge freezer on his back and another two of them struggling to carry a bloody pool table up to some bar.

Looks as though the first lad is lugging up a load of beer. And there may be more booze in the second man's load.

Bloody first world junketeers, exploiting the natives and feeling good because they then tip them a couple of dollars extra.

pummice

Looks like these lads are hauling up loaves of Brennans Bread and Tuborg beer

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

jvan wrote: »

Would you class smokers as selfish, sure they're likely to get cancer and be a burden on the health system and their family.
Some amount of opinionated ****e being spouted on this thread. Let the people who seek adventures do their thing and worry about how you live your own lives.

Can you see no irony in this statement? In your own thread contributions, you are hardly holding back. Why should anyone else? This has been reported on the national news. It’s going to be discussed.

Crusty Jocks

Roy Al Maile wrote: »

edit, still people commenting 'hope he is found safe' on gofundme...

At this stage the go fund me is at best, disingenuous and very insincere, at worst, it is bordering on fraudulent.

Those pages allow for and encourage updates on progress to let donors know what is happening. As mentioned, the wording from the outset was deliberately vague in specifics. There is someone monitoring the page closely and has ample time to update on Lawless’s certain death at this stage and what the objectives are now and what the funds will be used for.

I hope the direct family have very little input in this, which is very possible with being consumed with grief and shock but whoever is running it should be ashamed of themselves.

qxtasybe1nwfh2

Sunrise_Sunset wrote: »

How do you apply for a refund? i thought all donations were non-refundable.

You can request a refund directly from the site if it's within the same calendar day.

Stark

MadYaker wrote: »

I'd love to hike as far as first base camp on Everest. A mate of mine did it last year and it looked amazing and not too dangerous or difficult.

Yeah Base Camp is on my bucket list. I figure if that woman who managed to fall and sue for 40k on the Wicklow Way made it there without any mishaps or needing to sue anyone, it can't be that hard

I am sure the location he fell is littered with bodies, all unrecognizable because of extreme injuries. How on earth would the Sherpas paid and sent up there to search know what to look for amid the tragic human rubble? I’m sure all the climbers dress fairly similarly. They may well return with a body (or parts) or two but only DNA would be able to determine who they belonged to. Maybe other families would have their loved ones to bury instead or as well.

jam_mac_jam

Nepal is an incredibly poor country which depends on the money for tourism and mountainering so there is two sides to it. It's not all just poor exploited people by the nasty westerners. Yes obviously the porters and sherpas should be paid fairly for their work but a lot of Nepalise people make their livelihood from tourism in areas which it is very difficult to make a living.

Stark

Stark wrote: »

Yeah Base Camp is on my bucket list. I figure if that woman who managed to fall and sue for 40k on the Wicklow Way made it there without any mishaps or needing to sue anyone, it can't be that hard

An expensive helicopter day trip from Kathmandu includes an hour there plus a cup of coffee in a high hotel. Instead I took the much less costly one hour sightseeing flight in an airplane (there were over a hundred departures on the particular sunny morning I did it). Got two close-up passes of the mountain in the comfortable little virtually silent Embraer jet, as well as two views from the cockpit which were magical, like being in a simulator with a painting of Everest drawn in for entertainment. I have a big printed canvas photo on living room wall, taken on this flight. The local guide told me that Conor McGregor had just done the helicopter morning trip. “He is great man of Ireland” he said enthusiastically.

Shemale

knucklehead6 wrote: »

yes raising 25000 for charity... How selfish of him :rolleyes:

You're probably one of those who looks at suicide victims as selfish as well, aren't you?

This garbage narrative, a lot of these "fundraising" efforts abroad are bollox, I know someone who "raised" €10,000 for charity by doing a 3 week walk in Peru, out of the 10k their flights, acccomodation in 5 star hotel is netted out of the amount raised.

A page for Seamus Lawless is https://sponsor.me/IrelandonEverest where it states "Everything that we raise above and beyond our expedition costs will go directly to Barretstown", maybe there are more pages but I found this one.

I completely agree with other posters, if he wants to raise money for charity as a husband and father why not run in Ireland.

In summary he died doing something extremely risky he always wanted to do, for "charity", his insurance policy must have been crap cause it is currently not aiding with search effort so there is a funding page to raise €750,000 to repatriate him.

bucketybuck

bucketybuck wrote: »

I think you'd need to be up there to fully understand what is going on.

I have been above 20,000ft, when you get into higher altitude it really is a different world altogether when it comes to what you can and cannot do. Any exertion, even as simple as just moving your feet is hard, lifting your leg knee high just to step onto a boulder is harder again, running or pushing yourself for any length of time is simply out of question. The oxygen isn't there to fuel any exertion, you are immediately out of breath and energy and even the simplest of tasks require a lot of effort.

You'll see people trekking up Kilimanjaro, not a technical climb at all but all you can see is chains of people barely inching along putting one foot in front of the other. Think walking pace slowed down by half or even more, thats all they can do, they aren't used to the altitude and going faster could leave them in serious trouble. Everest is quite a bit higher than that again, and far more inhospitable.

So imagine being in a place where it is a serious effort just to walk forward, a place called the death zone where you know you will die if you don't get in and out as soon as you can. Then you come across somebody in trouble. You can barely lift your own feet, what do you think is going to happen if you try to support their weight as well?

And I'm not talking about the way up, but the way down, where you have been awake for 12 hours and dying for every last minute of it. Your oxygen is probably all gone and you need to get out of the death zone before it is too late. What do you do? You would want to be very confident in your strength to try and help that person, because in the death zone the likelihood is that helping them will mean two dead people instead of one.

The climbers know all this, so while it might be a holiday, in terms of mentality they aren't exactly sitting beside the pool weighing up their life choices.

My only experience of any kind of altitude is staying in Cuzco at 12000ft, where breathlessness, nausea, headache and overall malaise was the backdrop. First 24 hours I spent in bed, like with full blown influenza but without the temperature. Was so relieved to be back in Lima over a week later when at last I ceased to be breathless. Climbing a giant mountain like this? Not on for my body!

Still waters

Deleted User wrote: »

An expensive helicopter day trip from Kathmandu includes an hour there plus a cup of coffee in a high hotel. Instead I took the much less costly one hour sightseeing flight in an airplane (there were over a hundred departures on the particular sunny morning I did it). Got two close-up passes of the mountain in the comfortable little virtually silent Embraer jet, as well as two views from the cockpit which were magical, like being in a simulator with a painting of Everest drawn in for entertainment. I have a big printed canvas photo on living room wall, taken on this flight. The local guide told me that Conor McGregor had just done the helicopter morning trip. “He is great man of Ireland” he said enthusiastically.

how much was it ?

gman2k

MadYaker wrote:

I'd love to hike as far as first base camp on Everest. A mate of mine did it last year and it looked amazing and not too dangerous or difficult.

I've been to Base Camp 5360m and it's extremely hard, certainly the hardest physical activity trip I've ever done.. Most of us were suffering with Altitude sickness (AMS) by the time we got there, one girl was choppered out on the trek back and straight to hospital with cerebral odema. Trekkers die going there every year. We saw numerous people being carried out along the track. I myself was in the Khumbu in 2001 and was choppered out with AMS at a much lower altitude.
I've met with loads of people who summited, including one climbing Sherpa who has been up 5 times.
The "western" climbers who go have to pay huge fees - a huge part of it in climbing permits, but it has no correlation to your chance of success, as you still have to place one foot in front of the other yourself. The Sherpas are the reason though why any climber makes it to the top as they lay the ropes, setup camps, setup the O2 caches etc.

The porters who supply all the goods to the teahouses along the trek in work very hard, carrying loads we could never dream of. But for them, it's their livelihood, and without this job they would be destined to work the building sites of Dubai like tens of thousands of their compatriots.
There are laws in place limiting the loads each can carry, but they often break the limits themselves of their own choice.
The most extreme load I saw was on the back of one porter up near Lobuche at 4900m - he was carrying a stove on his back, reckon it was 150kg.
There was trouble a few years back when they tried to get an airstrip built up above Namche, so goods could be flown in further up the khumbu valley, the porters whose livelihoods depend on it put a stop to it. All that's choppered in now to this location is large building materials - ply, beams, windows, roof sheeting etc. But it's still carried from there further up the valley by porters.
The people who live in the Khumbu are some of the wealthiest in Nepal, due to the tourism.

Now to talk about the climbers again, I think a lot of comments on this thread are disgusting describing them as thrill seekers etc. For mountaineers, being in the mountains is what sustains them in life.
I know that the mortality rate amongst motorbikers is higher over their lifetime, yet we don't hear them described here in the same way as some of the disgusting comments about Shay.
Also, Shay had climbed Denali in Alaska, which is a serious achievement in itself on a very dangerous mountain. He was no thrill seeking tourist.

Squatter

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Nepal is an incredibly poor country which depends on the money for tourism and mountainering so there is two sides to it. It's not all just poor exploited people by the nasty westerners. Yes obviously the porters and sherpas should be paid fairly for their work but a lot of Nepalise people make their livelihood from tourism in areas which it is very difficult to make a living.

Too true. And let's not even mention what happens to far too many unfortunate female Nepalese teens. Nothing to do with this tragedy of course, but always worth a mention. (as a complete aside, I subscribe to this small charity: http://nlt.ie and urge others to do likewise, if they wish)

tuxy

redmgar wrote: »

This was a limit put by gofundme

NIMAN wrote: »

I am wondering how she came about setting the target at €750,000 to begin with though?

Are you serious? I have been highly critical of the gofundme but this shows a level of greed far beyond what I expected.

Crusty Jocks wrote: »

At this stage the go fund me is at best, disingenuous and very insincere, at worst, it is bordering on fraudulent.

Those pages allow for and encourage updates on progress to let donors know what is happening. As mentioned, the wording from the outset was deliberately vague in specifics. There is someone monitoring the page closely and has ample time to update on Lawless’s certain death at this stage and what the objectives are now and what the funds will be used for.

I hope the direct family have very little input in this, which is very possible with being consumed with grief and shock but whoever is running it should be ashamed of themselves.

Olivia Waters is the person who set it up. Because she works for Trinity College everything must be legitimate and above board.

holliehobbie

But would Seamus want more people to die trying to find his body? That is the reality of the situation at the moment.

lazygal

gman2k wrote: »

Now to talk about the climbers again, I think a lot of comments on this thread are disgusting describing them as thrill seekers etc. For mountaineers, being in the mountains is what sustains them in life.
I know that the mortality rate amongst motorbikers is higher over their lifetime, yet we don't hear them described here in the same way as some of the disgusting comments about Shay.
Also, Shay had climbed Denali in Alaska, which is a serious achievement in itself on a very dangerous mountain. He was no thrill seeking tourist.

Of course he was. He had a wife and child at home and a baby on the way. That's enough thrill seeking. He's a selfish man to have embarked on a so called charity holiday when he knew he could die. My husband loves adventure sports. He doesn't do them now he has a family who need him at home more than he needs to have a hobby. Motorbiking is also something he wouldn't go near.

Crusty Jocks

tuxy wrote: »

Are you serious? I have been highly critical of the gofundme but this shows a level of greed far beyond what I expected.



Olivia Waters is the person who set it up. Many on here have said because she works for Trinity College everything must be legitimate and above board......

sorry, I didn't mean it was an outright con job by some opportunistic randommer. I didn't know it was a colleague of his but even so, I still regard this fund raising as being borderline fraudulent. It is not stating facts in why funds are being raised at this present moment now that he is dead (and always was), it has not been updated with what will be done with it now...people are still being led to believe he is retrievable and astonishingly going by a previous post there are people stupid enough to believe he is still alive and could potentially be rescued. We have a financial ombudsman to protect these dumbasses from departing with their hard earned euros and certain advertising needs to be adhered to, I can't see how this is any different. The page should be reported somehow at this stage.

tuxy

Crusty Jocks wrote: »

sorry, I didn't mean it was an outright con job by some opportunistic randommer. I didn't know it was a colleague of his but even so, I still regard this fund raising as being borderline fraudulent. It is not stating facts in why funds are being raised at this present moment now that he is dead (and always was), it has not been updated with what will be done with it now...people are still being led to believe he is retrievable and astonishingly going by a previous post there are people stupid enough to believe he is still alive and could potentially be rescued. We have a financial ombudsman to protect these dumbasses from departing with their hard earned euros and certain advertising needs to be adhered to, I can't see how this is any different. The page should be reported somehow at this stage.

I agree 100%, my point was that despite what some other posters have said I don't believe just because someone works for Trinity that it somehow makes them incapable of dishonesty.

tuxy

holliehobbie wrote: »

But would Seamus want more people to die trying to find his body? That is the reality of the situation at the moment.

Well it does seem he had a real passion for climbing and I doubt someone like that would agree to putting others in danger needlessly. It's been established for some time now that even if they knew where the body was it would not be possible to retrieve it this year. The small window where it is possible to climb that high is probably closed until next May due to bad weather this year.

It's currently a mystery what the real motive behind the gofundme is.

gctest50

tuxy wrote: »

........

It's currently a mystery what the real motive behind the gofundme is.

Whatever could it be ?

Tough one dat