"He Died Doing What He Loved" Case 2099

I wish we could dispense with that trite phrase, but it seems like many people can't resist whenever some damned fool takes a foolish risk, like climbing Mt. Everest, and dies making the attempt.

This guy, an American named Don Cash, made it up the summit, but delays in traffic coming down cost him his life.

It may be overdue to have a lottery system in place so that cases like this are avoided in the future.

Better yet, stop all climbing of Everest and the other 8,000-meter mountains.

Snip:

On the descent, though, something went wrong and Cash lost consciousness. The two Sherpas quickly performed CPR and were able to revive the 55-year-old and move him down to the Hillary Step, the iconic rock feature 200 feet below the summit. After the 2015 earthquake shifted rocks on the mountain, the Hillary Step is no longer as technically challenging as it once was. But it’s still a steep snow slope that can create bottlenecks, especially when there are hundreds of people all pushing for the summit at once. When Cash and his Sherpa guides got to the Hillary Step they were forced to wait their turn for at least two hours. During the wait, Cash passed out again and took his final breaths. The cause of death is currently unknown.

Upon research, the last time there were no deaths on Everest was in 1977, 42 years ago, but this was in the era before extreme sports became popular, and few people bothered with climbing in the Himalayas.  Only two people made it to the summit that year.