I think the real problem is lift. I believe the reports that Eurocopter made it to the peak. Just not sure that they hovered, landed, and took off.
iirc, from the reports on Madan's trips (one each for Weathers and Gau) he had to use ground effect to basically skate up the mountain, up to camp 1. He then spun the helicopter 180 and dropped. They'd load one guy on, Madan would get the weight off of the skids and basically ski down the mountain until he had enough lift to get truely airborn. Very dicey work, and a nice job to save 2 lives.
As far as roping in. Even the simple task of clipping onto a carabiner can be challenging at altitude. Discovery's series had some interesting footage of how hard of a time people were having trying to attach their grigris, even on oxygen.
Climbing is dangerous. Heck, check out the later editions of Krakauers book, and see how many of the professional climbers are dead. It can happen at the top, getting to the summit too late(Scott Fisher), or at the bottom, trying to take a picture of the mountain (Babu Chiri). At the end of the day, the helicopter is going to have little effect in most peoples decision making process on whether to go up.
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I think the real problem is lift. I believe the reports that Eurocopter made it to the peak. Just not sure that they hovered, landed, and took off.
iirc, from the reports on Madan's trips (one each for Weathers and Gau) he had to use ground effect to basically skate up the mountain, up to camp 1. He then spun the helicopter 180 and dropped. They'd load one guy on, Madan would get the weight off of the skids and basically ski down the mountain until he had enough lift to get truely airborn. Very dicey work, and a nice job to save 2 lives.
As far as roping in. Even the simple task of clipping onto a carabiner can be challenging at altitude. Discovery's series had some interesting footage of how hard of a time people were having trying to attach their grigris, even on oxygen.
Climbing is dangerous. Heck, check out the later editions of Krakauers book, and see how many of the professional climbers are dead. It can happen at the top, getting to the summit too late(Scott Fisher), or at the bottom, trying to take a picture of the mountain (Babu Chiri). At the end of the day, the helicopter is going to have little effect in most peoples decision making process on whether to go up.