[pessimist]

Sad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool.

Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling).

Edit: 3% is for climbers above base camp - for summit climbers its close to 10%! According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster

[pradocchia]

But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool.

Not to mention two sons, two and three years old respectively. There is a season of life for climbing mountains. This was not it.

[meatmanek]

Climbing Everest is not cheap -- on the order of $50k. It's possible he couldn't afford it during that "season of life".

[JabavuAdams]

Well, maybe he had kids before he got to climb Everest. Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing?

There's really never a good time to climb Everest.

It might be much better for the kids to have a dead father than a bitter, reluctant father.

[gwright]

> Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing?

I don't know about giving up on dreams in the abstract, but yes, having kids should change the priorities in your life and that will most likely mean giving up some of your own wants, big and small, in order to care of your kids. If you aren't comfortable with that change, then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids.

[JabavuAdams]

> then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids

Contributing genetic information and some parenting can be a net positive even if the parent is ultimately absent (for whatever reasons).

Take the extreme case of a parent who disappears just after the child's birth. The other parent may still be thankful to have the child, and the child may still be a credit to society.

Is the disappearing parent a good parent? Not really. Should he/she have never had the child, as you suggest? Well, that's up to the child, really.

I.e. it's hard to fault your parents for making you, whether they're good parents or not.

Do you have kids? It's relevant because I used to make arguments like yours until I had a child and realized how much more nuanced these arguments actually are.

[mst]

He believed in this. His wife presumably knew he did.

I salute them.

Now could we please get the hell out of their personal decisions? Seriously. I'm not comfortable with HN acting as if they're entitled to judge his and her choices. I doubt any of us would want our community to judge ours.

[pandeiro]

I upvoted you for the 'never a good time...' line lolz, but your last statement is truly absurd. I assume you don't have kids. Nothing replaces a parent, even a flawed one.

[JabavuAdams]

> Nothing replaces a parent, even a flawed one.

That's easily refuted -- it depends on how flawed.

Talk to some kids who have been abused, abandoned or had debilitatingly mentally ill parents.

Compare with kids whose parents divorced or who lost a parent to disease.

[kloncks]

I don't understand all this harsh judgement, especially from the HN crowd.

Who are you to say what he should or shouldn't do? He essentially died from a freak accident that couldn't be predicted ahead of time.

Telling him that he shouldn't do something because he's married with children is like someone telling you you shouldn't pursue a dream (whether that be climbing a mountain or trying an innovative startup with a high chance of failure) just because you happen to be married.

You don't know his situation. I don't know his situation.

Can't we just stop this judging and simply feel bad about an unfortunate death?

[AJ007]

1 in 10 chance isn't a freak accident, its called being reckless and I don't see anything to feel bad about.

[there]

i wonder if, assuming he had one, his life insurance policy will pay out or if this will be considered a reckless action on his part.

[dstein]

I think most insurance policies cover someone while in their own country. Outside of his country would be travelers insurance.

[samtp]

I think the criticism on here is not too harsh and could have been predicted by people who knew he was doing this. Many people see the father as the protector of the household. Sure, this view plays into traditional gender roles, but to deny it would be to ignore the reality of how many people think.

By going off and risking his life on a personal accomplishment, he wasn't doing the best job to protect his family. There are an unlimited number of other ways that he could have challenged himself physically and mentally without the risk to the people close to him.

This isn't a criticism of John as a person, but a decision that he made. I don't know who he was and I'm sure that he was a great man. But he put his family at risk to pursue a challenge that is mostly a boost to his own ego.

[yelsgib]

You can't criticize a decision outside of the context of the person who makes it.

[samtp]

You're right. He probably had a deadly disease and the only cure was at the top of the highest mountain on earth.

Honestly what context do you possibly need? There aren't really a lot of externalities here

[yelsgib]

My point is that you don't know his situation, so you can't judge his actions. You don't know how many "externalities" there are (whatever an "externality" is).

The fact that you can't imagine a worthy justification (in terms of his value system or your own) doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. And no, you cannot categorically deny the existence thereof.

[BrandonM]

You seem to be judging people's decisions based on your own value system and dreams as opposed to theirs.

[pavel_lishin]

Startups typically don't kill you, and leave your family without a primary provider.

[sdoowpilihp]

All these differing opinions really highlights what you hear a lot of mountain climbers say about how people either "get it", or the sport is a complete enigma to them.

[samtp]

Same with Pog collecting my friend. You either 'get it' or the practice is a complete act of tomfoolery

[peterbraden]

It was his lifelong ambition. Whether it was selfish or not is between him and his wife - let's not pass judgement on the dead.

[samtp]

If you can pass judgement on the living then you can do the same to someone who has died. While putting the dead on a pedestal may comfort our own feelings about death, it doesn't escape the reality of their actions.

[yelsgib]

You shouldn't pass judgement on the living.

[jedc]

His family clearly supported him (based on a few other news outlets that actually interviewed them).

[gwern]

So? Are you seriously suggesting that if the family had disapproved of his mountain climbing, they would actually say so in a public interview?

'We're terribly upset and saddened and she'll never know her father, but while we're suffering in public, we'd like to mention that we were against the whole climbing thing in the first place. We told you so, John!'

[wtn]

His family was enabling his narcissism.

[jedc]

Having actually known John in real life, I disagree with your description of him as a narcissist.

[samtp]

Someone doesn't have to be a complete narcissist to occasionally behave in a narcissistic manner. Hell, we all act narcissistically from time to time (some would even say all the time).

[CamperBob]

His family made a lot of money on that same narcissism, and derived a lot of security from it.

Conversely, someone who can be talked out of climbing a mountain can also be talked into keeping his day job, and probably will be.

[Entaroadun]

Ok this is kind of ridiculous. Really? Really? No I'm quite sure in this case it's definitely selfish, independent of what his wife thinks. And not passing judgement on the dead? Cmon man you have to be trolling.

[peterbraden]

I happen to believe that criticizing people that cannot defend themselves is tasteless, and judging situations that I know nothing about is misguided.

I'm sure there is a lot of this story that we will never know, criticism is not going to change anything and if anything is offensive to the bereaved.

[Entaroadun]

Tasteless? I don't think you're getting it. He risked his life completely unnecessarily while he needed to be a father. What he has done is categorically selfish. Your defense of his actions is that "It was his lifelong ambition." If you believe that then you already acknowledge that his action is selfish; <i>his</i> ambition caused him to abandon his responsibilities as a father and husband.

I don't see it as much as criticism as it is a simple fact. I posted not because I wanted to make a change so much as because I was utterly surprised by someone defending this person. Furthermore, my comments are in reply to your post and not directed at any members of the family, but I would hope that at least the wife realizes the moral implications of her husband's decision at this point.

[vixen99]

How about that we remain silent.on matters of which we are ignorant? We are not party to this man's innermost thoughts and family conversations indeed such is none of our business and it is more than a touch offensive to offer up judgments. Let's leave the family to mourn their loss, shall we?

[jamesaguilar]

"matters of which we are ignorant"

Are not all the facts of this case known? Father of N, does something dangerous and unnecessary, leaves N children fatherless. Are there other relevant issues of fact that we do not know?

True, it may be tasteless to call it out . . . but the internet is tasteless. :-/

[peterbraden]

I think this is where we differ. You believe that because he took a risk for the goal of something other than his wife or kids, which you believe are his primary priority, and because that risk did not pay off, he is selfish.

I just want to point out that this is a very slippery slope. Does this mean that fathers in the army are being selfish for going to war rather than staying at home with their kids?

What about businessmen who work long hours and neglect their families?

There are many ways to live your life. This man chose a risky path, and sadly was killed before he could watch his children grow up. In his mind, perhaps, the risk was outweighed by the benefits of being able to tell his kids that he had fulfilled his dreams.

> I would hope that at least the wife realizes the moral > implications of her husband's decision at this point.

That to me sums up why I disagree with your comment. I hope his wife all the best in recovering from her loss, and raising her kids. The moralizing of some uninformed person on the internet are completely irrelevant to her at this point.

[anamax]

> I happen to believe that criticizing people that cannot defend themselves is tasteless, and judging situations that I know nothing about is misguided.

That's not how the intertubes, or people for that matter, work.

Consider - there's another thread on HN right now about the utility of battleships. It's full of strongly held opinions by folks who confuse being smart with knowing what they're talking about. Oh, and the critics are savaging the long dead folks who built battleships.

[hugh3]

At least, unlike a lot of dead fathers, he (presumably) left his family well provided for, financially. That's something.

[mmaunder]

Same situation with Rob Hall in 1996 (a very bad and very famous season on Everest) and his 7 month pregnant wife Jan Arnold. She was also a climber and physician who had submitted Everest with Hall in the past. He called her via sat phone from the summit to say goodbye.

[ckcheng]

As I recall, Rob Hall was a mountain guide leading a team. He died, doing his job, staying with a team member who was in trouble to try to help.

[sdoowpilihp]

Of that 10% of deaths, According to Chris Warner (a well known mountaineer) 4 out of 5 of them are due to human error.

[yelsgib]

This comment makes me extremely angry. Do you know anything about this man or his family? Do you know anything about the reasons that he was climbing the mountain?

Disrespectful in the extreme.

[poundy]

> Sad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool.

I believe this is exactly why he is the CEO of a popular company and others like me are not. He takes risks most of us avoid for various reasons!

[kenjackson]

I believe they're not strongly correlated. I know a lot of people that take risks that most of us avoid. Most of these people share very few characteristics of your typical CEO. Half of them end up on YouTube with clips that begin with, "Check this out...".

[rmobin]

It's a big difference to risk starting a company vs climbing Mt Everest. That's actually a big mental block people have - they are afraid of risk, but starting a company or asking a cute girl out and failing is more of an ego hit than a threat to your existence.

[hernan7]

He was the CEO of a popular company.

[pitdesi]

FYI - the overall rate is ~9% but has been declining significantly in recent years...

http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKillerMountain...

"To date, there have been 1,924 ascents of Mount Everest (more than 1,300 different climbers), and 179 people have died. The overall fatality rate is thus about 9% (fatality rate is defined as successful summits compared to fatalities). However, since 1990 there has been an explosion of summiteers and fatality statistics have changed. Up to 1990, the Everest fatality rate is a whopping 37%, with 106 deaths and only 284 summits. Yet from 1990 until today, the rate has dropped to 4.4%; 73 people have died, and 1,640 have summited. Thus, the rate decreased to about eight times less than the pre-1990 fatality rate!"

[gamble]

Everest may be statistically less dangerous, but I suspect that's because the vast majority of climbers today (really, all except a handful of Sherpas at the start of the season) are climbing with fixed ropes on guided ascents. Everest today is still a dangerous mountain, but the dangers are themselves statistical (bad weather, illness, etc) more than technical.

[aplusbi]

I think the the fact that the dangers are mostly statistical is what makes Everest so dangerous. Not to make light of the difficulty in summiting Everest, but you can literally just hike to the top. This invites a lot of amateur climbers who lack the experience to even recognize dangerous situations, much less deal with them.

[dp1234]

One of the guides in a documentary on it said that if Everest was at sea level, you would take your kids to summit it. But the altitude makes it a completely different animal. I wonder what the statistics are on frostbite and amputated body parts (fingers, toes). All of the documentaries I've watched seem to include a pretty high rate of some kind of frostbite in many of the climbers.

[hugh3]

Interesting. Though I imagine that a lot of people who die climbing Everest die because they did something stupid. What's the death rate for people who are sensible? (This guy doesn't seem to have done anything stupid, his brain just didn't like the altitude).

I wouldn't do it. But I do want to climb Mt Kilimanjaro sometime (much less dangerous).

[scott_s]

What's the death rate for people who are sensible?

Sensible how? Like not climbing Everest? Be careful how you define it, because there's the danger of saying that everyone who lived was sensible. Anyway, that's kinda like saying that drunk driving is only dangerous if you're not sensible when you're doing it. We can't survive that long that high, and our judgement becomes seriously impaired, similar to being drunk.

[bhickey]

Dying on Everest isn't a matter of sensibility. Most people who die are stricken with altitude sickness[1]. HACE and HAPE move fast, and the only effective treatment is reduction in altitude. Hyperbaric chambers can buy time, diamox isn't shown to be effective for HACE and HAPE.

Acute mountain sickness (AMS) can strike even lower. A friend of mine was in Nepal with the Discovery Channel this past Fall. One of the producers was evacuated due to AMS when they were under 6000m. Altitude is a lottery. For my part, there's plenty of climbing near sea level that kicks my butt.

[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Leading-Causes-of-Death-In-th...

[TheAmazingIdiot]

Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling).

I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but that is a horrible pun.