Thin Air Persuasive Speech

April 25, 2015 a 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes Kathmandu. The quake causes a large avalanche that destroys the southernmost part of the Everest base camp. That didn’t seem to stop many members of expeditions. You can’t understand how complicated this really is until you understand mountain. So, let’s start off with a brief history of Mount Everest.

Mount Everest also known as Sugarmatha and Chomolungma to the natives of Tibet and Nepal. Resting above the clouds is the summit, at 29,029 feet (or roughly 5 miles) above sea level. You’d think something as large as Everest would be known of for thousands of years, but that’s not the case, in fact it was only discovered in 1802. It was discovered by English cartographers who were climbing

a mountain to the north and observed Everest as much larger. After they returned to England they proclaimed the mountain as ,“Mount Everest.” after Sir George Everest who was a very
acclaimed British Mountaineer, As they say ,”The more you know.” -NBC

Now that you know more about Everest, let’s get to it. Immediately after there was utter chaos. After the snow settled rescuers and mountaineers ended up finding a total of nineteen bodies at basecamp. And a total of 121 people injured. Don’t worry not all of those were at basecamp. And about 3,700 people were killed in Nepal. Of the nineteen who were killed in the avalanche there were 10 sherpas, 2 Americans, 1 Chinese, Australian, 1 Japanese, and 4 unidentified foreign climbers. Of the Americans who died they were Dan Fredinburg, Marisa Eve Girawang, and Tom Taplin.

In the immortal words of Bob Marley ,”You need no worry.” because rescue operations commenced on the morning of april 26th . That morning a helicopter arrived at basecamp, and took twenty-two mountaineers to Pheriche village for medical attention. But later that day rescue operations were stopped dead in their tracks due to bad weather. Luckily the next day on April 27th 60 climbers were rescued from camp one, and 170 climbers from camp two.

All in all this wasn’t the first avalanche to happen on Everest and definitely won’t be the last. That being said there will always be risk in climbing Everest and people will continue to die trying. To everyone who was lost on Everest and in Nepal ,”May your soul rest peacefully.”